
Class. X^ 5^51 
BookLCrX2__ 



MEMORIALS ' ^-^ 



OP 



NORTH CAROLINA. 



BY J. SEAWELL JONES, 



OF SHOCCO. 

1887 

N E W - Y O R K : 
1838. 






N E W -Y O R K : 

Printed by Scatcherd & Adams, 
No. 38 Gold Street. 



TO THE 

HONORABLE WM. COST JOHNSON, 

AS A SLIGHT BUT MOST SINCERE TOKEN 

OF ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS, 

RESPECT FOR HIS CHARACTER, 

AND GRATITUDE FOR HIS FRIENDSHIP, 

THIS WORK 

IS INSCRIBED, 
BY HIS OBLIGED AND AFFECTIONATE SERVANT, 

SHOCCO. 



PREFACE. 

The chapters comprised in this volume were pub- 
lished some years ago in the literary Gazettes of 
the day, and are all, excepting the one signed "Paci- 
ficator," from the same pen. They all relate to 
periods of the history of North Carolina, which, un- 
til a few years ago, were buried and forgotten ; and 
they are now published to keep alive the memory of 
those times. The bitterness of controversy has at 
least the good effect of signalizing historical events ; 
and many a hurried student will perhaps pause to 
observe in what great matter it is that the skepti- 
cism of an Irving or a Jefferson is deemed vicious 
and reprehensible. 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



CHAP. I. 

THE LANDING OF SIR WALTER'S COLONY. 

" They were the first that ever burst 
Into that silent sea." 

Coleridge. 

On the 4th of July, 1584, two English ships hove 
in sight of the coast of North Carolina, somewhere 
about Cape Fear. They were the vessels of Sir 
Walter Raleigh, and were on a voyage of discovery, 
to take possession of some portion of the new world 
in the name of the crown of England. The day on 
which they first beheld the shores of our country has 
since become the great political holiday of the age, 
and is now distinguished as the anniversary, not of the 
origin, but of the downfall of the authority of Eng- 
land over the United States. The commanders of 
these two ships were Philip Amadas and Arthur 
Barlowe ; and the ceremony which they performed 
upon the coast of North Carolina, and which I am 
now about to celebrate, is perhaps one of the most 
memorable events in the history of mankind. The 
fortunate results of the dominion of England over 



8 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

the territory of our Union are as innumerable as are 
the stars; and the free Anglo-American, in whatever 
forests he may be found, will turn reverently to the 
spot consecrated as its birth-place. The two ad- 
venturers loitered along the coast of North Caro- 
lina, in full view of the shore as it sweeps in a curve 
from Cape Look Out to Cape Fear. Tliere was 
scarcely wind enough to ruffle the plumage of the 
two ships as they lay their gentle course, and the 
mild land-breeze was so fragrant, that the voyagers 
exclaimed that they seemed to be in the midst of 
some delicate garden, abounding with all kinds of 
odoriferous flowers. Thus making their liquid way, 
on the 13th of July, 1584, we find the two ships at 
anchor in the roads of Ocracock inlet, within a, few 
hundred yards of the island which lies to the south, 
and which the Indians called Wokokon. And this 
is the spot, of all the fair lands of our wide-spread 
country, which was first occupied by old mother 
England ! 

About mid-day on the 13th, when there was not a 
film of a cloud in the heavens, nor a breath of air to 
break the sea ; when the tides were still, and the 
sunshine danced along the glittering sand-banks 
from Hatteras to Look Out ; when the whole scene 
was so intensely tranquil, that those ships looked 
like " painted ships," and that ocean a " painted 
ocean ;" when the crew stood about the decks in si- 
lent wonderment at the vast and solitary world be- 
fore them — no scudding skiff, no rising smoke, no 
distant sound: at this hour, when solitude was most 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. y 

awful and most sublime, the sound of prayer broke 
the enchantment, and the first words of Christian 
suffrage were uttered in returning thanks to God 
that the lion flag of old England was about to 
be planted upon the coast of the new world. The 
boats were then manned, and the two captains, at- 
tended by the most notable gentlemen of the expedi- 
tion, were pulled toward the shore ; and as the boats 
grated upon the sand, they sprang upon the beach, 
and Captain Amadas shouted in a loud voice : — 

" We take possession of this land in the right of 
the queene's most excellent majestie, as rightful! 
queene and princesse of the same, to be delivered 
over to the use of Sir Walter Raleigh, according to 
her Majestie's grant and letters patent, under her 
highnesse's great scale." 

This, then, was the birthday, and here, then, was 
the birthplace, of our great Anglo-American empire ! 
And how fortunate was it for the cause of civil and 
religious freedom all over the world that England, 
and not Spain, France, or Portugal, colonized our 
splendid domain ! Look to the South American 
states, already in the decrepitude of old age ; theii 
moral, intellectual, and physical condition alike un- 
improved ; their governments unsteady and tyran- 
nical ; their private estates insecure ; and the very 
liberty which, but a few .years ago, they so proudly 
achieved, already degrad'ed^into popular despotism. 
Spanish blood corrupted the new world. The seeds 
of civil and religious despotism were sown, broad 
cast, from the city of Mexico to Cape Horn ; and 

2 



10 MEMORIALS OP NORTH CAROLINA. 

after a revolution of three hundred years, Spanish 
America can boast of but little that is either grand 
or sublime, in all her history, excepting the monu- 
ments of Montezuma's magnificence and the victo- 
ries of Bolivar. 

But how different has been the career of the An- 
glo-American race ! The seed which was planted 
on Wokokon Island has given birth to a new genus 
of men. Another and a hardier race than even 
the Anglo-Saxon has sprung into existence, and 
are now bearing onward to the Pacific, as they 
leap from the Alleghany to the Rocky mountains, 
the language and the liberty of their forefathers. 
The great principles of human government have 
been simplified ; the liberty of the people, and their 
right to self-government, immoveably establislied ; 
a free, happy, and powerful republic, under the con- 
stitution and laws of which the rights of individuals 
are as inviolably sustained as is the glory of the na- 
tional faith, now covers the fairest portions of the 
new world ; and, what is the proudest result of all, 
this new-born nation, in the purity of its government 
and in the happiness of its people, is now sending 
back, across the sea, to regenerate and to reform the 
old world, the sublime lessons of her own experience. 
Happy, proud Anglo- America ! She has given to 
the world the great principle of a free government. 
She has extended the provinces of liberty, civiliza- 
tion, and of law. " The lightning of the heavens 
could not resist her philosophy, nor the temptation 
of a throne seduce her patriotism." 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 11 

Let US now return to the voyagers. As soon as 
they had performed the ceremony of occupation, the 
company penetrated a few miles into the interior, 
and, on reaching the summit of an eminence, they dis- 
covered that they were on an island, and not on the 
continent. " They behelde the sea both sides of them 
to the north and to the south, having no end any of 
both ways." They were on an island clad with 
vines, which reeled so full of grapes, " as that the 
very beating and surge of the sea had overflowed 
them, of which we found such plentie, as well there 
as in all places else, both on the sand as on the 
green soil, on the hills as in the plains, as well as on 
every little shrubbe, as also climing towardes the 
tops of high cedars, that I thinke in all the worlde 
the like abundance is not to be found." From the 
eminence which they had gained, they beheld the 
valleys replenished with goodly cedar trees, and 
having discharged their harque-buz shot, a flock of 
cranes (the most part white) arose under them, with 
such a cry, redoubled by many echoes, as if an army 
of men had shouted all together." The island is 
again described as having " many goodly woods, full 
of deer, conies, hares, and fowle, even in the midst 
of summer, in incredible abundance. The woods 
are not such as you find in Bohemia, Moscovia, or 
Hercynia — barren and fruitless, but the highest and 
reddest cedars in the world, far better than the cedars 
of the Azores, of the Indies, or of Lybanus." 

The extracts which I have made, are taken from 
the report of the two captains, Amadas and Barlowe, 



12 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

made to Sir Walter Raleigh on their return to Eng- 
land. The description is not too highly wrought, for 
we must remember that the ravages of man and of 
the ocean have, for more than two centuries, desolat- 
ed and changed Wokokon Island. The beautiful 
name of Virginia was first applied to the islands of 
North Carolina, and I have seen in the earliest maps 
and charts of the state at present bearing that name, 
Roanoke and Wokokon Islands laid off to the south, 
under the somewhat boasted title of " Old VirginiaJ^ 
This, at least, was the Virginia of Sir Walter Raleigh, 
and of the Fairy Q,ueen of England. His name is 
identified with no other section of our Union, and 
the name of the capital of North Carolina best be- 
tokens her proud remembrance of the character of 
her founder. 

The two captains, after having surveyed Wokokon 
Island, returned to their ships, and there remained 
for two days before they encountered the natives. 
It is not my design in this number to follow them in 
their adventures among the savages ; I would rather 
ask the reader to come with me to the consecrated 
spot, and see how it now looks after a revolution of 
two hundred and fifty years. 

I have myself stood upon such an eminence on 
Wokokon Island as that described by the voyagers, 
but I sought a more poetical hour than mid-day, and 
I had, too, the benefit of a blustering March wind, 
which threw the waters all into a rage, and brought 
down the waves of the Pamlico all the way from 
Roanoke Island, as heavy as if they had been born 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 13 

in the Gulf Stream. It was a clear, cold day ; and 
with the history of these voyagers fresh in my me- 
mory, I had wandered about the island, and at sunset 
I placed myself as near as possible on the very emi- 
nence on which they had stood centuries ago. The 
view before me was indeed wild and startling. The 
glorious sunset gilded the crested waves of the Pam- 
lico, as they broke in boundless succession afar to the 
west and to the north, and the narrow island that 
curves around to the north-east from Ocracock to Hat- 
teras, all covered as it was with the mellow teints of 
the sun, resembled a rainbow resting on the face of 
the sea. The opposite towns of Portsmouth and Ocra- 
cock, and old Shell Castle, stood before me amid the 
noisy waves, as if they had arisen to earth from the 
convulsive throes of the excited sea, and then there 
was the narrow island, with its naked woods and 
vines, and the waves bursting and thundering upon 
its shores, combing their foam higher and higher on 
each return, as if in the wantonness of their strength 
they would clap their hand over the very spot on 
which I stood. To me there is something especially 
fascinating in the scenery about Ocracock Inlet. I 
love it for its very bleakness ; and jiistorical associa- 
tion, too, hallows it in my memory. It is indeed a 
place of storms, for nature has there provided every- 
thing which can give fury to the wind.*^, and, come 
from what quarter they will, they bring noise and 
strife. An easterly wind arouses the whole Atlantic, 
and the waves dash through the narrow straits, re- 
treating from the fury of the storm ; and then a west- 



14 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

erly wind arises, and, sweeping over the Pamlico, 
sends them all back to their ocean mother. A north- 
east gale will bring down from the banks of Hatteras 
sand enough to create an island ; and oftentimes a 
ship riding at her anchorage, is enveloped in a whirl- 
pool of sand, and lifted high and dry out of the sea; 
but then a southern storm will send its ministers 
to the rescue, and the briny waves will soon ply 
their strength, undermine it, and sweep the ship 
away. 



MEMORIALS OK NORTH CAROLINA. 15 



CHAP. II. 

"The gentle childreu of an isle, 
Who knew but to worship and to love." 

Russell. 

For two days our adventurous voyagers saw no 
signs of man. The vine-clad and flowery isle before 
them seemed to have bloomed away its existence un- 
enjoyed by man, and their minds were filled with the 
sublime thought — that in this virgin world the cla- 
mour of war had never been heard, nor the silence of 
its shores ever violated, save by the thunders of the 
waves and of the clouds of heaven. On the third 
day, however, this dream was broken. A solitary 
boat, with three savages, turned the northern point 
of Wokokon, and gliding into an indenture in the 
shore, one of the party sprang upon the beach, and 
coming directly opposite the anchorage of the ships, 
he walked up and down along the water's edge, seem- 
ingly in wonder at what he saw. When Captain 
Amadas and three other gentlemen approached him 
in a boat, he made them a speech of much length, 
in his own barbarous tongue, and then firmly step- 
ping into their boat, he manifested by signs his de- 
sire to visit their ships. How brave is innocence ! 
It goes wheresoever it will, and triumphs where guilt 



16 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

would fall. It has survived the fiery furnace, and 
once walked upon the stormy sea, as upon the plains of 
the earth. 

The name of this Indian was Manteo; and the 
whole domestic history of England cannot boast a 
more perfect character. He was alike the firm friend 
of the English, and the stern patriot and defender of 
his tribe ; and whenever a strife arose among them, 
he held out the olive-branch, and made peace upon 
the principles of justice. His savage birth and life 
were indeed but additional embellishments of his 
character; and while he restrained the inhuman 
vices of his tribe, he checked the not less odious 
avarice of his new and more civilized associates. 
On some future occasion I shall celebrate his hu- 
manity, his generosity, and his valour. At present I 
have only space thus briefly to introduce him to the 
reader, and to announce the more astonishing cir- 
cumstance of his life — that he was honoured with 
the reverence, the obedience, and the gratitude of the 
whites. 

On reaching the ships, Manteo wandered about the 
decks, examining every part of them with the curio- 
sity of ignorance ; and having tasted of their meat 
and of their wine, and received a present of a hat and 
some other trifles, he departed again to his own boat 
and attendants. He then put off into the water and 
" fell to fishing, and in less than half an hour hehad. 
laden his boat as deep as it could swim ;" and then 
he came back to the shore, divided his fish between 
the two ships, and departed. 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 17 

The next day Granganameo, the king's brother, 
with a fleet of canoes, entered Ocracock inlet ; and 
leaving his boats, as Manteo had done, in a small cove, 
he came down to the water's edge near the ships. 
He was attended by forty or fifty men, " very hand- 
some and goodly people, and in their behaviour as man- 
nerly and civil as any of Europe ;" and they spread 
down upon the sea-shore a long mat or carpet, upon 
which Granganameo was seated, and " at the other 
ende of this matte four others of his company did 
the like — the rest stood about him somewhat afar 
oflf." 

He showed no signs of fear or mistrust as the 
English, dressed in full array of armour, approached ; 
but he sat perfectly unmoved, and bade them, by 
signs, to be seated near him, and then he made them 
" all figures of joy and welcome — striking on his 
breast and on his head, and afterwards on ours, to 
shew we were all one — smiling and making shewe 
the best he could, of all love and familiaritie." Af- 
ter this welcome, Granganameo made them a long 
set speech, to which Captain Amadas replied by 
presenting him with divers things, which he joyfully 
received; and during the whole ceremony none of 
the company of attendants spoke a word audibly, but 
each in the other's ear very softly. 

During this visit the voyagers learned that the coun- 
try was called Wingandaceo, and that the king was 
named Wingina, and that his majesty had recently 
had a fight, in " which he was shot in two places 
through the body, and once clear through the thigh 

3 



18 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

— by reason whereof, and for that he lay at the chief 
town of the country, which was five days' journey 
off, they saw him not at all." Thus, by the illness 
of the king, Granganameo was in authority, and 
when the Captain went around' making presents to 
the company of attendants, he rose from his seat and 
took them all away, and indicated to the voyagers 
that all things should be given to him, and that the 
men around were but his servants and his followers. 

In a few days the voyagers commenced trading 
with the savages for skins, and such other commo- 
dities as they possessed ; and on showing all their 
merchandise, the article that most took the fancy of 
Granganameo was a large, bright tin dish, which he 
seized, and " elapt it before his breast, and after made 
a hole in the brim thereof and hung it about his neck, 
making signs that it would defend him against his ene- 
mies' arrows ; for these people maintain a deadly 
and terrible war with the people and king adjoining. 
They exchanged the tin dish for twenty skins, worth 
twenty crowns, and a copper kettle for fifty skins, 
worth fifty crowns." 

A few days after this, the captains gave a collation 
on board the ships, and Granganameo came with all 
his retinue, and they drank wine and ate of their meat 
and of their bread, and were exceedingly pleased ; 
and in a few days more he brought his wife, his 
daughter, and two or three children on board the ships. 
His wife is represented as having been a most beau- 
tiful and modest woman. She wore a long black 
cloak of leather, with the fur-side next to her skin ; 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 19 

her forehead was surmounted with a band of white 
coral, and from her ears swung, even down to her 
waist, bracelets of precious pearl. Her raven hair 
was streaming down from her coral crown, and in- 
tertwisting itself with her ear-rings of pearl, flowed 
gracefully back over her jetty robe in wild and un- 
shorn luxuriance. Granganameo, too, on this occa- 
sion, was dressed in state. A crescent of unpolished 
metal, much resembling gold, surmounted his head ; 
and this he would neither remove for their inspec- 
tion, nor would he even stoop or bend that they 
might touch it. A band of white coral ran around 
his head, passing over his forehead immediately at 
the bow of the crescent, as if it had been its border; 
and this, with the tuft of hair on the summit of his 
scalp, completed his head-dress. His body was robed 
in a black cloak similar to the one worn by his wife, 
and this seemed to be the uniform of those whom the 
voyagers denominated the nobles of the land. The 
young daughter of Granganameo was distinguished 
by an extraordinary cluster of ear pendants, an un- 
commonly beautiful head of richly flowing auburn 
hair, and a pair of bright chestnut eyes. Such 
were the fashions of the savages of North Carolina. 
The civility and kindness of the voyagers were 
well appreciated by Granganameo and his wife; 
and they spread around the country such reports of 
their good-will, that " a great store of people" came 
down to Wokokon to see the strangers, and to trade 
away skins, pearls, coral, and dyes. During all this 
intercourse nothing occurred to give dissatisfaction on 



20 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

either side, and in a few days we find Captain Bar- 
lowe, with seven comrades, at Roanoke Island on a 
visit to Granganameo. The particulars of this visit 
deserve to be specially detailed, to illustrate not more 
the manners and customs, than the hospitality of the 
uncorrupted American savage. 

On the north point of Roanoke Island there stood 
an Indian village of nine houses. Several were very 
large and commodious dwellings, being built of the 
best cedar, and containing as many as five rooms. 
The town was fortified by a circle of pickets, and 
the entrance through this, into the interior of the vil- 
lage, was over a turnpike-path, which wound around 
from the water's edge, and entered the fortification 
through an avenue of these picketed trees. This 
was the town of Granganameo ; and as Captain 
Barlowe and his company approached it in their boats, 
the wife of the good savage, being in the entrance 
near the water's edge, saw and welcomed them cheer- 
fully and friendly. 

Granganameo not being at home, the civilities of 
the tribe devolved upon his wife — and generously 
did she acquit herself She ordered a number of 
men to draw the boats out of the water, others she 
appointed to carry the voyagers on their backs, and 
when they were brought in the outer room, she gave 
them seats around a large fire. Their outer gar- 
ments, which had been wet in a rain, were taken off, 
quickly washed and dried, and the women of the 
village came and brought warm water and bathed 
their feet. My reader, I have drawn this picture 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 21 

not from my imagination, but from history ; nor have 
I purloined from classic annals a description of the 
Golden age, and thrown it amid the scenery of Roa- 
noke Island ; but this good Indian woman deserves 
to live renowned in the history of North Carolina 
as the good Samaritan, who ministered to the sorrows 
of the weary and distressed. 

But Granganameo's wife was not satisfied even 
with these cordial attentions. She had prepared, in 
the words of Captain Barlowe, " a solemn banquet," 
wherewithal to refresh them; and as soon as they 
had dried themselves, and reassumed their outer gar- 
ments, they were ushered into an inner room to en- 
joy the feast. The tables were set all around against 
the walls of the house, and on them were placed 
" some wheate like furmentie ; venison, sodden and 
roasted ; fish sodden, boiled and roasted ; melons, 
rawe and sodden ; roots of divers kinds, and divers 
fruites." Their drink was wine, made of the grapes 
of the island, and ginger-cinnamon and sassafras- 
water. Captain Barlowe exclaims — " We were en- 
tertained with all love and kindness, and with as 
much bountie, after their manner, as they could 
possibly devise. We found the people most gentle, 
loving, and faithful, and such as live after the man- 
ner of the Golden age." 

The house of Granganameo comprised five rooms. 
The hall in which the voyagers first entered, the ban- 
quet-room, and then came two sleeping-chambers, 
and in the rear of them all was the sanctum, in 
which they kept an idol to bend before and to vvor- 



22 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

ship, and " of whom they spoke incredible things." 
The feast went off gloriously. The voyagers gave 
many signs of their pleasure and gratification, and 
the good woman implored them to tarry for the 
night ; but the prudent Captain Barlowe preferred 
lounging in an open boat near the shore during a 
rainy night, lest there might be some miscarriage. 
She, however, sent them mats to cover with, and 
brought down to the boat, with her own hands, some 
supper put in pots ; and Captain Barlowe concludes 
his account of the feast by declaring, that a more 
kind or loving people cannot be found in the world. 
Let us now see what information, as to the geo- 
graphy of the country, these voyagers acquired. 
The Indian name of the Albemarle Sound was Occam, 
and into it flowed a river called JVomojmna^ and 
near the mouth of this river was a town called Cho- 
wanook, and the name of the king thereof was Poo- 
neno. The Pamlico shores of the county of Carte- 
rek were called Secotan, and those of Craven, Po- 
monick. Secotan was under the king of IVingan- 
daceo, and Pomonick under an independent king, 
named Piamacwn. In the interior, toward the set- 
ting sun, the country was called Newsiok, and 
through it coursed the river Neus. Tlie king of this 
country was in alliance with Piamacum, and had 
aided him in a war against the Secotans. The jour- 
nal of Captain Barlowe speaks, too, of a river called 
Cipo^ which flowed into the Occam, in which were 
found " great store of muscles" producing pearls, 
and constant allusion is made to a great town call- 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 23 

ed S/iicock, which was said to be five days' journey 
from the banks of the Occam. 

There was a tradition about Secotan, that, some 
years before the arrival of the voyagers, a ship had 
been wrecked on the coast, and the unfortunate 
strangers had been preserved by the savages. They 
remained ten days on the southern cape of Wokokon 
Island, and afterwards put to sea in a rudely-con- 
structed craft, and were seen no more. Some weeks 
after their boat was found wrecked on a contigu- 
ous island, and these were the only people " well 
apparelled and of white colour" of whom the Indians 
had ever heard. 

I will here conclude my notices of the voyage 
of Captains Amadas and Barlowe. The report 
which they made to Sir Walter Raleigh gave a 
powerful impulse to the adventurous spirit of the 
whole British nation, and was distinguished at that 
day as the very beginning of the authority of Eng- 
land over the present territory of the United States. 
A rich bracelet of pearl was carried home and worn 
by Sir Walter as an emblem of his new dominions ; 
and Manteo and Wauchese, two of the native sava- 
ges, were passengers back to England, where they 
became the companions of the noble Lord Proprie- 
tor of Virginia. 



24 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



CHAP. III. 

THE MECKLENBURGH DECLARATION OF INDE- 
PENDENCE. 

" A glorious people vibrated again 
The lightning of the nations— liberty." 

Shelley. 

In the first chapter of this work I celebrated the 
adventures of the first voyagers of Sir Walter Raleigh, 
and I pointed to the first spot consecrated by the 
flag of England. I there claimed for the territory of 
North Carolina the distinction of having been the 
mother-earth of our Anglo-American empire ; and I 
detailed, with some enthusiasm, the blessings which 
had resulted to all mankind from the circumstance 
that England, and not Spain, France, or Portugal 
first occupied our shores. I now approach an event 
in the history of North Carolina, alike interesting in 
its occurrence, alike important in its consequences, 
as fatal to the authority of England as it was glo- 
rious for the sovereignty of the American people. 
After a revolution of nearly two hundred years, the 
flag which, on the 13th of July, 1584, had been 
planted on the coast of North Carolina, began to 
wane, the unfitness of the government of England 
for the condition of her American colonies became 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 25 

every year more obvious ; and amid the commotions 
and throes of an excited and an indignant nation, 
the people of Mecklenburgh county signalized the 
20th of May, 1775, as the last day of the power 
of England over a portion of the original domain of 
Sir Walter Raleigh. On that memorable occasion 
American independence veas first asserted ; and it is 
curious to observe, that the annals of a single state 
should contribute the two great events in the history 
of the present age — the alpha and the omega of the 
dominion of England over her old North American 
colonies. 

When the first continental congress met in Phila- 
delphia, in September, 1774, the people of the colo- 
nies could not have been said to have been united 
en any other principle of opposition to the crown 
than the mere right of taxation without representa- 
tion. American independence was a treason not to be 
spoken of in the sunshine of open day ; and I believe 
I may point to the name of my countryman, William 
Hooper,* as the only member of that illustrious body 
who had openly predicted independence, and who 
had already cast the horoscope of his infant country. 
Always ahead of his contemporaries in the career of 
liberal principles, we find him urging independence, 
while others were contending for the stale right of 
petition, under the banner of reconciliation. He had 
been the favourite pupil of James Otis of Massachu- 
setts, and caught from him the fire of freedom. 

* See Letter to James Iredell, 24th April, 1774, third part of the De- 
fence of North Carolina. 

4 



26 MEMORIALS OP NORTH CAROLINA. 

In North Carolina, for at least ten years before 
the meeting of the continental congress, the great 
struggle had been directed against the oppressions of 
the provincial government. The tyrannical legisla- 
tion of parliament had never been felt, and an annu- 
al protest against the right to tax was the only at- 
titude of hostility ever assumed by the assembly 
against the crown of England. Our sufferings were 
altogether internal. Arbitrary taxes were levied, 
not for the crown, but for the support of the Gover- 
nor and his party ; and when Mr. Burgwyn, one of 
the auditors of the government, made his famous re- 
port in 1772, stating, that although money enough 
had been collected from the people to have liquidated 
the debt of the province, still that that debt was not 
liquidated, the house of assembly promptly repealed 
the special tax-law, and when the Governor vetoed 
their bill, they then, in a series of resolutions, recom- 
mended to the people to pay no more such taxes. 

If any reliance can be placed upon the political 
signs of that day, it is not venturing too much to as- 
sert, that had not the provincial congress been con- 
vened, the people of North Carolina, before the close 
of the year 1774, would have been in a state of open 
rebellion ; and with an unanimity, too, which would 
have ensured the overthrow of the royal government 
of the province, and have commanded the admira- 
tion of every true American heart. But, although she 
was thus independent in her actions, as well as in the 
wrongs under which she writhed, she was not want- 
ing in all due sympathy with her sister colonies, and 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 27 

especially with old Massachusetts, the native land 
of William Hooper, who, indeed, in that day stood as 
the Colossus of the Whig party of the province. 

As soon, however, as the proposition to convene a 
continental congress had been proclaimed in North 
Carolina, the hostility which had been for so long a 
time directed against the provincial government, 
catching additional fury from the prospect of a nation- 
al union, now sought a nobler object for its aim ; and 
with the crown of England in full view, the people 
lost sight of the petty Governor and his mercenary 
minions. The fever of a general revolt spread from 
Hatteras to the remote west ; and so rapid and so 
eager was this feeling, that in less than five months 
after the first thought of a continental congress, the 
whole province was in a state of the strictest orga- 
nization, each county with its commitee busily en- 
gaged in accumulating the materials for war. 

Such, then, was the state of public feeling in 
North Carolina for some months previous to the 
20th of May, 1775; and the reader Avill here re- 
member, that at that time Boston was in the pos- 
session of British troops. Our North Carolina go- 
vernor had been routed from the palace at New- 
Berne, and was daily threatening our shores with the 
long-expected armament of Sir Peter Parker, which 
was to spread havock and desolation over the whole 
province. He had stirred up the Scotch population 
to oppose the Whig cause — he had spread dissentions 
among the people along the southern borders— he 
had excited the slaves to a midnight massacre of the 



28 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

wives and daughters of the land — and the news which 
flew into the interior from the sea-board, was, that 
the ocean itself was covered with the canvass of En- 
gland, bearing on to our shores her victorious arms. 
Dark, however, as was the hour, our countrymen did 
not falter. The county committees were regularly 
in session, deliberating on the state of the province ; 
and it was just at this excited crisis of affairs when 
Colonel Thomas Polk, of Mecklenburgh, at the in- 
stance of many gentlemen of that county, ordered the 
election of two delegates from each of the districts of 
old Mecklenburgh, then including Cabarrus, to meet 
in convention at Charlotte, on the 19th day of May, 
to consult for the public safety. 

But before the time appointed for the. meeting of 
this convention had arrived, the clamour of war was 
heard from the far north, and the people of Mecklen- 
burgh were started up, as it were from a dream, by 
the clank of arms and the shouts of victory, which 
now reached them from the battle-field of Lexing- 
ton. On the morning of the 19th of May, the whole 
county was up in arms ; and along the winding paths 
of the hills and the valleys, were everywhere to be 
seen squadrons of armed men on their reeking steeds, 
dashing on to Charlotte. The whole population of 
the county was there concentrated, each man busi- 
ly engaged in gathering the details of the battle — 
such as the number and the names of those who had 
fallen, and if they had fallen with a glory worthy of 
their cause. The matrons of Mecklenburgh, too, 
were that day at Charlotte, counselling with the 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 29 

patriarchs of the land, and urging on their beardless 
boys to a preparation for the tented field of war. 
A cloud of darkness seemed to hang over the des- 
tinies of our country, as if the smoke of that battle- 
field had been swept onward by the gale, and now 
enveloped the wild forests of freedom's land. In the 
midst of all this excitement, the convention met. It 
was just such an hour as that which precedes a vol- 
canic burst, when the mountain now reels and groans, 
and then endures silently its tremendous agony ; and 
as that immense concourse of people stood under the 
silence of an excitement too intense for w^ords, 
watching the every action and syllable of the assem- 
bled patriarchs, a motion was made to declare inde- 
pendence, and the mountain goddess of American 
liberty flashed into existence, amid the shouts of the 
multitude, ready and equipped for battle, like Pallas, 
from the head of Jove. 

A committee w^as then appointed to prepare reso- 
lutions expressive of the sense of the convention, and 
then they adjourned to meet the next day. On the 
20th of May, 1775, immediately after the organiza- 
tion of the convention, Ephraim Brevard, th e chair y 
man of the committee, rose, and read the famous 
Mecklenburgh declaration of independence. It was 
then unanimously adopted, and proclaimed to the 
world as the future political creed of the people of 
Mecklenburgh. This state paper, although wanting 
in many of the requisites of a linished composition, 
surpasses, in the boldness of its principles and in the 
energy of its language, any document of the age in 



30 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

which it was produced. Its tone is the emphasis of 
freedom — its great principle was as the first ray of 
liglit from heaven — and it sprung from the excited 
and troubled mind of it author as irradiant as light- 
ning from a cloud. The late John Adams, when 
first he saw the Mecklenburgh declaration, pronounc- 
ed upon it his judgment, that the feelings of America 
at that period were never so well expressed ; and 
he tortured the vanity of Mr. Jefferson, by saying to 
him, in the same letter, " besides, too, it was actually 
fifteen months before your declaration." Previous to 
it, reconciliation was the ultimatum — compromises 
were spoken of — we were to be represented in par- 
liament — we were to have a race of nobles, created 
from among our own people ; but all these schemes 
the patriots of Mecklenburgh dashed aside as a poi- 
soned chalice, and, claiming the right to think for 
themselves, they pointed to national independence 
as the great end of the struggle with the mother 
country. The electricity of heaven never gleamed 
more brilliantly over her mountains of gold than 
did that fire of independence as it spread over her 
hills and her valleys, all glowing from Concord to the 
banks of the beautiful Catawba. 

This remarkable event in the history of North 
Carolina, although noticed at the time by a procla- 
mation from the royal Governor, was thrown into the 
dark by the hard fighting which immediately suc- 
ceeded it. The battle of Bunker's Hill — the military 
organization of the province — the establishment of the 
Whig government — the battle of the Great Bridge, 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 31- 

and the conflagration of Norfolk — in both of which 
our North Carolina troops were engaged — the battle 
of Moore's Creek — and, finally, the unanimous adop- 
tion of a resolution in favour of independence by the 
assembled congress of the province, were but a few of 
the important events which occurred before the first 
anniversary of the Mecklenburgh declaration. Nor 
should I here fail to record, that this unanimous 
vote in favour of independence was on the 13th day 
of April, 1776, more than a month previous to the 
famous resolutions of that neighbouring state which, 
until a few years past, arrogated to herself the ho- 
nour of having first moved the ball of independence. 
When Mr. Adams first sent to Mr. Jefierson the Meck- 
lenburgh declaration, and the latter gentleman saw 
therein all the opinions and much of the language 
of the national declaration, he rebelled and writhed 
as if the great secret sin of his whole life had been 
exposed to the full glare of day. He seized his pen 
— denounced not only the document, but all the 
names appended to it, as a mere hoax ; and in the im- 
petuosity of his malignant wrath, declared that Wil- 
liam Hooper was the rankest Tory in congress ; and 
that this Mecklenburgh declaration was like " the 
North Carolina volcano," of which he remembered 
once to have heard. 

The Mecklenburgh declaration had, in faith, been 
buried by the North Carolina volcano of war and 
bloodshed which succeeded it ; but the excavations 
have been made, and the precious jewel has been 
brought to light, and it will stand as the great era 



32 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

in the future histories of our republic. An eminent 
Neapolitan, some years ago, wrote a book to prove 
that the ancients were unacquainted with the use of 
glass as applied to the windows of dwellings, and 
only a few weeks after its publication the excavations 
at Pompeii disclosed an edifice adorned with just 
such glass windows as a modern villa ; and so it has 
been with the researches which have been made into 
the buried history of North Carolina — the Mecklen- 
burgh declaration and the inde2Jendence resolutions 
have been disclosed, and the history of the state of 
Virginia is like the Neapolitan's book. 

But it is not our revolutionary annals only which 
have been misrepresented. The name of Sir Walter 
Raleigh, so intimately associated with the early his- 
tory of North Carolina, is familiarly claimed as one 
of the stars of Virginia ; and so very generally has 
this impression been stamped upon the literature of 
the age, that a distinguished foreigner, Mr. Tyrone 
Power, in his notices of the town of Petersburgh, en- 
thusiastically exclaims, " this is the Eldorado of Sir 
Walter Raleigh." He might as well have pronounced 
the river Appamattox the river Euphrates, and the 
country around him the site of the garden of Eden. 
Still Mr. Power is not to be censured. The illite- 
rate scribblers and orators of Virginia have boasted 
as much of the name of Sir Walter as if he had ac- 
tually kept the old Raleigh tavern at Williamsburgh. 
The famous John Randolph, of Roanoke, condescend- 
ed to purloin from the annals of a state which he 
sometimes affected to despise, the only dignity of his 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 33 

name ; and I saw last winter, in tlie columns of the 
Richmond Enquirer, (from the pen, as I have since 
understood, of a Charlottesville professor,) a some- 
what personal attack upon me for having asserted, 
in a volume of history, the notorious fact, that the 
name of Virginia was originally applied to the islands 
of the coast of North Carolina. Very well, Mr. Pro- 
fessor Tucker, your swaggering at Saratoga, not- 
withstanding. '' Catalincc gladios contcmpsi non 
Laos pcrtinicscamP 



i\h 



5 



34 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



CHAP. IV. 

" Let's quarrel about these matters. It will make us better friends. 
Seeing that we shall know each others' thoughts and rights." 

Blackwood. 

To the Editoj' of the N. Y. American : 

The two articles which I herewith enclose, ap- 
peared — the one in the American, the other in the 
Evening Star — some three weeks since. I beg that 
you will re-publish them, and that you will allow^ 
me the use of your columns to vindicate " my as- 
sumptions/or JVorth Carolina.^* 

[From, the JVew- York American^ 

The last Mirror contains an article on the Meck- 
lenburgh Declaration of Independence, from the 
" Memorials of North Carolina, by Jo. Seawell 
Jones" — from which I extract the following sentence, 
to reply to which I beg the use of your columns : 

" But it is not our revolutionary annals only 
which have been misrepresented. The name of Sir 
Walter Raleigh, so intimately connected with the 
early history of North Carolina, is familiarly claim- 
ed as one of the stars of Virginia ; and so very gene- 
rally has this impression been stamped upon the lite- 
rature of the age, that a distinguished foreigner — Mr. 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 35 

Tyrone Power — in his notices of the town of Peters- 
burg, entliusiastically exclaims — ' this is the Eldo- 
rado of Sir Walter Raleigh.' He might as well 
have pronounced the river Appomatax the river Eu- 
phrates, and the country around him the site of the 
garden of Eden. Still Mr. Power is not to blame. 
The illiterate scribblers and orators of Virginia have 
boasted as much of the name of Sir Walter, as if he 
had kept the old ' Raleigh Tavern' at Williams- 
burgh." 

Now, Mr. Editor, that Jamestown was settled 
under the immediate auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh, 
and that the country was called by him Virginia, in 
honor of the virginity of Queen Elizabeth, I never 
heard denied before. Mr. Jones, whose character I 
sincerely respect, is entirely at fault in this matter; 
and he will find himself — in his assumptions for 
North Carolina — at w^ar with Irving, Paulding, and 
all the learning of the country. 

A Subscriber. 

[^From the Evening Sta7'?[ 
Mr. Jones of North Carolina and Virginia. 

Mr. Editor. — Your proverbial affection for the 
character and principles of Mr. Jefferson has attach- 
ed to your name the best feelings of the South, and I 
therefore send you this for the columns of the Evening 
Star, having no doubt but that it will meet your ap- 
probation. The name of Jefferson has been of late 
years the subject of so much vituperation, that many 



36 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

reasonable people, who never examine for themselves, 
conclude, from the number of his assailants, that some 
great sin in his life has been but recently brought to 
light. The last N. C. Mirror contains an extract 
from the Memorials of North Carolina by Mr. Jones 
of that State ; and we there see that that gentle- 
man continues his abuse of Mr. Jefferson under the 
guise of defending his own State. He hates Mr. 
Jefferson for his principles, and hates Virginia be- 
cause she is proud of her native sage of freedom. 
According to him, Mr. Jefferson stole "all the opi- 
nions and much of the language " of the Declaration 
of Independence from the Mecklenburgh Declaration. 
According to him. Sir Walter Raleigh was not the 
Lord of the sacred shore at Jamestown ; and accord- 
ing to him the name of Raleigh is connected with no 
other territory of the Union but that of North Caro- 
lina. All these are new and startling points, and 
contradicted by every historian of any note; and 
this historical Revolutionist cannot expect Virginia 
to sit quietly and witness the degradation and insult 
of her proudest feelings. 

Mr. Jones sneers, too, at Mr. Randolph's title of 
" Roanoke^'' and says he purloined it from the annals 
of North Carolina. But how this is, he does not tell 
us. The river Roanoke is in the State of Virginia, 
and sweeps over a much wider extent of that State 
than it does of North Carolina. The estate of Mr. 
Randolph was directly upon its banks, and there he 
was boi"^, and from there he had as much right to 
take a nmne^ as Mr. Jones had to take the name of 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 37 

Shocco from the spot of his birth. The spirit with 
which Mr. Jones assails Virginia, and every thing con- 
nected with her history, convinces me he must have 
some latent, concealed reason for his bitter hatred ; 
and so long as he does not misrepresent the facts 
of our history, he may justify himself in the eyes of 
many ; but I could not permit his claim to Sir Walter 
Raleigh as the founder of North Carolina to pass 
uncontradicted, nor let even the occasion pass with- 
out saying a word of defence for the lamented Jeffer- 
son and Randolph. A Virginian. 

When I first saw these two articles, it did not ap- 
pear to me as at all necessary that I should reply to 
any thing they contained. In the first place they 
were anonymous communications, and I did not con- 
sider the editors of either paper in any wise respon- 
sible for their contents. Besides, too, I had supposed, 
that if there was any point of American history set- 
tled and altogether beyond controversy, it was the 
fact that the coast of North Carolina had been colo- 
nized under the auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh ; and 
that Roanoke, and the contiguous islands of that 
State, were known under the name of Virginia for 
more than twenty years before the settlement of 
Jamestown. But it seems I am not to be permitted 
to repose upon this conviction. I am denounced as 
an '' Historical Revolutionist," because I record the 
undoubted events of the history of our country, and 
because the mere record of those events assails the 
originality of the history of Virginia. With an en- 



38 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA; 

lightened public, denunciations of this kind can have 
no effect. If I have assumed too much for the his- 
tory of North Carolina, convict me by an appeal to 
the authorities of history ; and if " A Virginian " 
wishes to illustrate his own ignorance more fully 
than he has already done, he cannot do better than 
to devote himself to such a task ; and as his primal 
effort in such a cause, I challenge him to reply to 
this communication. 

The only two points involved in this controversy 
important for me to notice, are, 

1st. The claim of the late Mr. Randolph to the ti- 
tle of Roanoke ; and, 

2d. " Was Jamestown settled under the imme- 
diate auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh ; and was the 
country adjacent thereto called by him Virginia, in 
honour of the virginity of Queen Elizabeth 7" 

On the subject of Mr. Randolph's claim to the title 
of Roanoke, it is necessary to state that the river 
which now bears that name, was known in Indian 
history under the name of Moratuck; and that it did 
not receive its present appellation until at least a 
century after the first settlement of the island. The 
meaning of the word Roanoke is Pearl ; and such 
was its renown in Indian tradition, that the main 
river which fed the Occam, or Albemarle Sound, by 
degrees received the compliment of its name. All 
the glorious associations of the word, however, belong 
exclusively to the island. It was there where the 
good Indian woman, the wife of Granganameo, en- 
tertained the first voyagers of Sir Walter. In its wa- 



I 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 39 

ters the generous Manteo was baptized a Christian ; 
and it was on its soil where he was invested, by the 
command of Raleigh, with the title of nobility, and 
created Lord of Roanoke. It was in the deep recess- 
es of its vine-clad groves that the first Anglo-Ameri- 
can saw the light of heaven. There the foundation 
of the ancient " citie of Raleigh " was laid ; and it 
was there where an English people lived, suffered, 
and died. 

Mr. Randolph had caught some vague idea of the 
fame of the word in Indian tradition, and ignorantly 
supposing that the small stream at his feet, or at 
least that portion of the main river which lies in the 
state of Virginia, might be the heir to all its glorious 
associations, he did not scruple to adopt it as a part 
of his own name — leaving the world to infer that 
there was some probable connection between his an- 
cestry and the Pearl Island of the savage lord of 
Roanoke. Besides, too, he claimed to be descended 
from an Indian princess ; and in his crazy ambition 
for the empty sound of a title, he embraced the op- 
portunity to complete his aboriginal pedigree by 
purloining from the peerage list of North Carolina 
the almost forgotten nobility of one of her native sa- 
vages. 

But what does the correspondent of the Evening 
Star mean by asserting that " the river Roanoke is 
in the State of Virginia, and that it sweeps over a 
much wider extent of that State than it does of North 
Carolina V Has he ever even so much as looked at 
a map of North Carolina ? Has he ever studied one 



40 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

of the state of Virginia — or was he ever at school at 
ain A more " illiterate scribbler " than he is can no 
where be found; and I doubt very much whether even 
Professor Tucker himself, in his forthcoming Memoirs 
of Jefferson, will be able to exhibit any thing more 
striking in the way of blundering arrogance and igno- 
rance. The river Roanoke in the state of Virginia ! 
I wonder the gentleman did not claim the Mississippi 
because the Kenawha happened to be in Virginia. 
The truth is — and if the reader will refer to the map 
of Virginia he will find it is so — the Roanoke, as it 
starts from the junction of the Dan and Stanton, does 
not continue in the State of Virginia for more than 
forty miles ; and then, entering North Carolina in the 
county of Warren, it sweeps over a fertile section of 
that State of more than one hundred and fifty miles 
in extent. So much for the geographical knowledge 
of '' A Virginian." Let us now try him upon ano- 
ther point of the local history of his own State. 

" Mr. Randolph's plantation then was directly upon 
the banks of this river Roanoke, which is in the State 
of Virginia, and which sweeps over a much wider 
extent of that State than it does of North Carolina." 
Now, with all due deference, I think this too is a 
mistake, though not one of so much importance as 
" A Virginian" usually makes. Mr. Randolph lived 
in the county of Charlotte, which, I am sure, is some 
fifty miles from the junction of the Dan and Stanton, 
away up towards the mountains ; and I am very sure 
the Roanoke does not turn about and run iq^ the 
Stanton Hills all the way to Mr. Randolph's estate ; 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 41 

and then retracing its course, turn, as it were, reluc- 
tantly towards Nortli Carolina. If that noble stream 
had ever achieved such a triumph over the laws of 
nature, " A Virginian" would have been at least in 
the neighborhood of truth in asserting " that it 
sweeps over a much wider extent of Virginia than 
of North Carolina." 

Mr. Randolph's plantation, then, was not upon 
this stream, and remembering his ridiculous squeam- 
ishness as to the title of Roanoke, the world may 
well exclaim, where then was it] It was on a creek 
which courses through the county of Charlotte, 
emptying its waters into the Stanton, and which 
said creek has been dignified with the name of 
" Little Roanoke River." Such was Mr. Randolph's 
claim to the title which he assumed, and the reader 
will not fail to remember the story of the 4th of July 
orator in Rome, New- York, who boasted that the 
village around him had been the city of the Caesars, 
nor of the lunatic of Sparta, in Georgia, who insist- 
ed that he was the countryman of Lycurgus and of 
the heroes of Thermopykc. 

I will now come to the second point of this con- 
troversy, viz : — Was Jamestown settled under the 
immediate auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh, and was 
the country adjacent thereto called by him Virginia 
in honor of the virginity of Q,ueen Elizabeth 1 The 
correspondent of the American is a lady distinguish- 
ed for her love of letters ;! arid'Uier personal as well 
as mental charms are, in.my.view,^ more!. than poeti- 
cal. No maa yields to her more of the homage of 

6 



42 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

his heart than myself; but it would be unbecoming 
in me to sacrifice the history of my country to 
the enthusiasm of my feelings. She has enclosed 
to me an extract from a recent publication of Wash- 
ington Irving, Esq. which fully sustains her in the 
position she has taken against me ; and it being ad- 
verse to my principles to war against a beautiful 
woman, I shall accept the substitute she has offered, 
and thus welcome the strife. 

The extract from the work of Mr. Irving is the 
second paragraph of the Creole Village — a contribu- 
tion from his pen to the Magnolia for 1837, and is 
as follows : — " In the phraseology of New England 
might be found many an old English provincial 
phrase — long since obsolete in the parent country 
— with some quaint relics of the Round-heads, while 
Virginia cherishes ijeculiarities characteristic of the 
days of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Baleigh" 

Mr. Irving might as well have said that Virginia 
cherished peculiarities characteristic of the days of 
Herodias and John the Baptist ; for if she retains any 
memorials of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter 
Raleigh, it would puzzle even Mr. Irving's profound 
reading to tell how she obtained them. The Q,ueen 
died on the 24th of March, 1603, and the very first 
expedition for the settlement of Virginia sailed from 
England on the 19th of December, 1606, — nearly four 
years after the death of that famous princess. (See 
Smith's History of Virginia, vol. 1, p. 150.) Sir 
Walter Raleigh, too, was entirely out of the way of 
imparting any peculiarities to Virginia at the date 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 43 

of her earliest settlement, for he had been convicted 
of treason on the 17th of November, 1603, and was 
sent to the Tower, where he remained, (if in political 
durance, still in literary glory,) for the space of twelve 
years. How then is it possible that Virginia should 
hav e any memorials of the days of Queen Elizabeth 
and Sir Walter to cherish ? A more gross assault 
upon the truth of history can no where be found 
than in this short sentence of Mr. Irving, which is 
the less excusable in him, from the fact that he de- 
voted many years of painful study to the composi- 
tion of a work which has linked his name with the 
discovery and settlement of the whole continent of 
America ; and it is difficult to conceive how a scholar 
of such maturity of research, could have studied so 
closely the histpry of that age without retaining, as 
the fixed stars of his memory, those great events in 
the life of the noble Sir Walter, which have indisso- 
lubly connected his name with the history of the 
Anglo-American race. 

If Mr. Irving is curious on the subject of peculia- 
rities characteristic of the days of Queen Elizabeth 
and Sir Walter Raleigh, he should go to North Caro- 
lina. I will ensure him a rich field for the exertion 
of his antiquarian zeal : and there, too, he can ope- 
rate without any apprehension of mistaking the date 
of Elizabeth's existence, for the shores of that State 
were really occupied in the name of the Queen and 
of Sir Walter on the 13th of July, 1584.— [See Hak- 
luyt, vol. 3, p. 246.] — If, therefore, in the course of 
his researches, he should perceive any fashions 



44 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA, 

among the people of North Carolina, bearing the re- 
motest resemblance to the age of Queen Bess, he 
might very plausibly set them down as " peculiari- 
ties characteristic," &c. ; for in that case the good 
Q^ueen would not have been dead some four years, 
nor the gallant Knight in the Tower some three 
years, previous to the very existence of a colony. 

The truth is. North Carolina is full of feeling for 
the memory of Sir Walter, and it would be impos- 
sible for the most inattentive traveller to put his foot 
upon the shores of that State without hearing from 
the first islander he might encounter, the fact that 
the country around him was sacred to the services 
of Raleigh. He would be reminded of it by the thou- 
sand traditionary stories he would hear — by the very 
names of the hills, the valleys, aj;id the streams 
around him ; and I may venture to assert that there 
is no portion of the whole Union so illustrious in le- 
gendary lore as Roanoke Island — illustrious, indeed, 
from the very fact that it is linked with the magic 
name of Raleigh. 

His memory sparkles o'er the fountain, 
The meanest rill — the mightiest river 
Rolls — mingled with his name forever. 

There is the beautiful tradition of Sir Walter 
Raleigh^s Ship^ which has descended from the ear- 
liest history of the island, and which is still cherished 
with a religious veneration by the good matrons of 
the land. There is the capital of the State, situated 
in the centre of a county named in honor of a beauti- 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 45 

ful woman, Miss Esther Wake — constituting perhaps 
the most appropriate memorial of her founder ; and 
if Sir Walter himself could revisit the earth, and be- 
hold the magnificent palace which now crowns the 
summit of the city of his name, his ambition to be re- 
membered as the Romulus of a new people would 
be fully realized. 



To the Editor of the JVew- York American : 

Sir, — In one of your late papers I observe a long 
article from the able pen of Mr. Joscj)h Scaicell Jones 
of Shocco, by which I find that worthy and excellent 
historian to be involved in much vexatious contro- 
versy with certain writers of Virginia, on the subject of 
the claims of their respective States to associate the 
names of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh 
with their early history. As this controversy is ar- 
riving at that unhappy point where hard names and 
bitter epithets begin to fly about, let us try, Mr. Edi- 
tor, whether you and I cannot accommodate the 
matter, and restore the parties to harmony. 

According to Mr. Jones, the coast of what is now 
called North Carolina was colonized under the au- 
spices of Sir Walter Raleigh on the 13th of July, 
1584, and Roanoke and the contiguous islands of that 
State were known under the name of Virginia for 
more than twenty years before the settlement of 
Jamestown. 

On this he appears to found the claims of North 



46 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

Carolina to a monopoly of the " glorious associations" 
before mentioned. 

Now, it appears to me that these " glorious asso- 
ciations," though a very valuable and substantial 
property, and well worth quarrelling about, are ca- 
pable of being much dilated and extended, especially 
when connected with the shifting boundaries of ill- 
defined discoveries, and the fluctuating fortunes of 
early colonies. Let us try, then, if we cannot stretch 
them in the present instance so as to satisfy the rea- 
sonable wants of both parties, and so put an end to 
this unhappy controversy. 

As to the expeditions fitted out under the auspices 
of Sir Walter Raleigh, they embraced a wide extent 
of coast, from the West Indian Islands to Newfound- 
land; for we find his step-brother. Sir Humphrey 
Gilbert, at St. Johns, in June, 1583, with ships partly 
fitted out by Sir Walter Raleigh, when he takes pos- 
session of Newfoundland and its fisheries for the Bri- 
tish Crown. 

It was a year afterwards that another expedition, 
sailing under the auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh, 
swept the West Indian Islands and the coast of Flo- 
rida, and colonized the coast of North Carolina, as 
aforesaid. 

So much for the scope of Sir Walter Raleigh's ex- 
peditions. Now, as to the extent of country original- 
ly known as Virginia. This really appears at first 
to have been indefinite, and to have extended even 
to the northern limits of what has since been called 
New England. 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 47 

In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold sailed for the 
" northern part of Virginia," and when that worthy 
navigator was baffling and perplexing himself with 
cruizing about Cape Cod, Point Gammon, Onky 
Tonky,* Buzzard's Bay, and other places of classic 
name, he evidently considered himself coasting the 
country called after the Virgin Q,ueen, and brought to 
light by the enterprises of Sir Walter Raleigh. 

Furthermore, we find James I. of England, by let- 
ters patent, dividing that part of America lying be- 
tween the 34th and 45th degrees of north latitude 
into North and South Virginia ; the latter including 
all the coast between 34^ and 40*^. 

In 1630 further modifications took place affecting 
the names of these regions. In that year Charles I. 
granted to Sir Robert Heath all the territory be- 
tween 30^ and 36^^ north latitude, under the name 
of Carolina. This, in 1761, was subdivided into 
North and South Carolina. 

It would appear from all these premises, Mr. Edi- 
tor, that North Carolina, after all, forms but a small 
portion of the vast country originally called after the 
Virgin Q,ueen, and considered as discovered by the 
enterprises set on foot by Sir Walter Raleigh. If, 
therefore, we would observe strict justice in portion- 
ing out these " glorious associations " exclusively 
claimed for North Carolina, we ought not merely to 
give Virginia a full share, but to extend them far 
along the coast to the north, so that the remote rays 

* Since vulgarized into Uncle Timmy. — Ed. N. Y. Amer. 



48 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

might even gild the names of Cape Cod, Point Gam- 
mon, Buzzard's Bay, and Onky Tonky. 

I must confess, Mr. Editor, I was somewhat sur- 
prised, in reading the article of Mr. Jones, to find Mr. 
Washington Irving mixed up in the unhappy contro- 
versy, and that gentleman charged outright with " a 
gross violation of the truth of history." I was at a 
loss to imagine how Mr, Irving had run foul of these 
litigated points, and how he had made himself ame- 
nable to so heavy a charge ; whether in his history of 
the voyages of Columbus, or in his history of the Dutch 
dynasty of the Manhattoes. In both I knew he had 
much to do with questions of discovery and coloniza- 
tion, and that in both he laid claim to the most scru- 
pulous attention to historic truth. I found, however, 
that it was in none of his historical works, but in a 
paragraph of a comic sketch called the " Creole Vil- 
lage," published in one of the late Annuals. 

Now, I have no idea of taking up the gauntlet for 
Mr. Irving. If he will write comic sketches without 
profound historical research, and, above all, will at- 
tempt to give them the weight and authority of one 
of those grave depositories of learned lore, the Annu- 
als, let him be outlawed beyond the pale of courtesy, 
and abandoned to the mercy of all aggrieved histo- 
rians. But, as his offence seems, in some measure, 
connected with the question in dispute, let us ex- 
amine it more particularly. 

Mr. Irving stands clearly convicted of having said, 
in his comic sketch aforesaid, " that the State of Vir- 
ginia cherishes peculiarities characteristic of the 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 49 

days of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh." 
This, to be sure, points to no precise historic date or 
event, and seems to be a mere general observation 
on the state of society. Mr. Jones, however, indig- 
nantly denounces it as " a gross violation of the 
truth of history," and demands of Mr. Irving how 
Virginia " could obtain such peculiarities 7" — the 
Q,ueen having been dead nearly three years, and Sir 
Walter Raleigh being in prison at the time of the 
settlement of Jamestown (in 1607). 

Now, really, Mr. Editor, though Queen Elizabeth 
had been dead, and Sir Walter was in prison at the 
time, it does not follow that the peculiarities cha- 
racteristic of their days had either expired with 
the one or been shut up in the prison of the other. 

But how did Virginia obtain them ? Perhaps 
they were imported in the early expeditions to James- 
town. The first expedition, commanded by the gal- 
lant Captain Smith, and which founded that town, 
was set on foot by an association of noblemen, gen- 
tlemen, and merchants who had flourished under the 
reign of Elizabeth : on board of Smith's ship sailed 
Percy, a brother of the Earl of Northumberland. 
Several young gentlemen, accustomed to polite and 
genial life, and whose hands, unused to labor, blis- 
tered on wielding the axes, sailed on this expedition. 
In a subsequent expedition, in 1609, we find the 
names of Lord De la Warre, Sir Thomas Gates, Sir 
George Somers, Sir Thomas Dale, and others, — men 
of rank and distinction, who had been vsubjects of 
Q,ueen Elizabeth, and AAere contemporaries, if not 

7 



50 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

associates, with Sir Walter Raleigh. These men 
held distinguished stations in the enterprise to Vir- 
ginia : but there are many others, not specifically 
named, cavaliers of sanguine temperament and swel- 
ling hope, who had caught the romantic views of 
Sir Walter Raleigh, and expected to find a perfect 
El Dorado in the wilds of Virginia. These were 
the men from whom Virginia obtained peculiarities 
characteristic of the days of Elizabeth and Sir Wal- 
ter Raleigh; these were the men that may have 
stamped the Virginian character with that open, ge- 
nerous, hospitable, dashing spirit, which it retains to 
the present day. I do not, therefore, see, after all^ 
that Mr. Irving has committed the gross outrage upon 
history of which he stands accused. 

But, says Mr. Jones, " if Mr. Irving is curious on 
the subject of peculiarities characteristic of the days 
of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh, he 
should go to North Carolina." 

Wishing Mr. Irving a pleasant journey, and a 
merry christmas into the bargain, if he should arrive 
about this time, we will now see how North Carolina 
" obtained " those peculiarities ? Was it from the 
colony formed upon her coast in 1584, by the expe- 
dition fitted out under the auspices of Sir Walter 
Raleigh ? Hardly, Sir. The whole term of exist- 
ence of that colony was not above half a dozen 
years. Some of the colonists were slain by the In- 
dians ; others returned, disheartened, in their ships ; 
of the fate of others nothing was ever heard. In 
1590 the place was found in ruins, the houses demo- 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 51 

lished, part of the stores buried in the eartli, the 
colonists gone. Sir Walter Raleigh himself gave 
the matter up as desperate, and turned liis thoughts 
to other enterprises. 

In subsequent years, when Jamestown, in Virginia, 
had been settled, an expedition was sent from thence 
to see if any thing remained of the colony of Sir 
Walter Raleigh ; but no traces were to be found. 

While Virginia went on to increase and multiply 
her settlements, North Carolina appears to have re- 
mained a perfect wilderness. The first permanent 
settlement from which her population took its rise, 
was founded, we are told, about the year 1650 on 
Chowan River, principally by emigrants fi'om Vir- 
ginia ; and the proprietors of the Carolina grant au- 
thorized Berkeley, the Governor of Virginia, to take 
the settlement under his government and protec- 
tion. 

It would appear, therefore, that the characteristics 
of the days of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter 
Raleigh, which Mr. Irving is invited to go to North 
Carolina to study, must have been derived at second 
hand from Virginia, and actually imported from En- 
gland by the way of Jamestown. 

Thus, I trust, Mr. Editor, wo have w^ithout any 
profound research, settled the matter, not merely to 
our own satisfaction, but to the satisfaction of the 
belligerent parties ; and that the North Carolinians 
being offsets, as it were, from the generous stock of 
Virginia, and inheritors, through her, of the peculiari- 
ties characteristic of the days of good Queen Bess 



52 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

and Sir Walter Raleigh, will not flout their parent 
State ; but that both parties will divide in peace 
that inheritance of glorious associations, so justly 
prized by Mr. Joseph Seawell Jones, of Shocco ; 
but which, if much more harped upon, will become 
in the public ear as a " sounding brass and a tink- 
ling cymbal." 

Your constant correspondent, 

Pacificator. 



To the Editor of the American : 

I beg the use of your columns to rejoin to some 
animadversions in your last Saturday's paper over 
the signature of " Pacificator,^'' in which the history of 
North Carolina is misrepresented, for the especial pur- 
pose of sustaining Mr. Irving's Virginian "peculiarities 
characteristic of the days of Ctueen Elizabeth and Sir 
Walter Raleigh." I myself, too, as the historian of 
North Carolina, am threatened with " a sounding brass 
and tinkling cymhal,^^ if I dare say any thing more 
about the absurdity of these aforesaid peculiarities ; 
and we are gravely told by the apologist of Mr. Irving 
— although Queen Elizabeth had been dead, and Sir 
Walter had been in prison some years before the settle- 
ment of Virginia — that still the peculiarities characte- 
ristic of their days had neither expired with the one 
nor been shut up in the tower with the other; and that 
of course it was to certain straggling peculiarities — 
certain ghost-like characteristics — which had surviv- 



1 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 53 

ed the death and the encasement, and which had 
been stained and corrupted by a four years' amalga- 
mation with the Scotch hirelings of James the First, 
that the author of the Creole Village alluded, when 
he said "Virginia cherishes peculiarities characteris- 
tic of the days of Q,ueen Elizabeth and Sir Walter 
Raleigh." 

This, then, is the defence of Mr. Irving, founded, 
the reader will perceive, upon the ancient doctrine of 
the transmigration of souls ; for it plainly intimates 
that the spirit of Queen Bess animated the reign of 
her Scotch successor, and, in defiance of the strong 
contrast between their characters, carried out the 
^' peculiarities characteristic " of her own days. But, 
unfortunately, the history of England contradicts the 
defence on this point. The characteristics of the 
reign of James are utterly at variance with those of 
the days of the Queen ; and so this eccentric appli- 
cation of the doctrine of Pythagoras to historical re- 
search is another outrage upon history. 

So — I beg the gentleman's pardon — I must insist 
tliat the " peculiarities characteristic," &c. did expire 
with the death of Elizabeth and with the imprison- 
ment of Sir Walter ; and I appeal to the history of 
England. Raleigh was, indeed, the very personification 
of the great characteristics of the reign of the Queen. 
In his gallantry every where — in the field as well 
as the ocean — he was ever the best representative 
of the ambition and the courage of his sovereign. 
In his frequent captures of the fleets and the island 
cities of Spain, he was but ministering to the bitter 



04 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

national hatred of his mistress. In his literary pur- 
suits, her desire to be surrounded by men of letters 
was realized ; and the magnificence of his dress 
crowned the completeness of his personification of 
almost every peculiarity characteristic of the age of 
Queen Elizabeth. But still, so unsuited, from the 
very gallantry of his whole life, was this hero of his 
age, to the tame, pedantic, and cowardly genius of 
the Scotch king ; so perfectly uncongenial were 
those splendid characteristics which were embodied 
in the character of Raleigh, with the low duplicity 
and insolent bigotry of James ; that in less than one 
year after the succession of the latter to the throne, 
the gallant Knight was in the tower in disgrace, 
with all the laurels which the hand of his fairy Ctueen 
had bound about his brows, faded and " withered as 
if in the dark and silent grave." 

The position of Mr. Irving is altogether untenable. 
The whole history of the English monarchy does 
not present a stronger contrast of character than be- 
tween James and Elizabeth ; and the idea of disco- 
vering, in a colonial establishment of the former, any 
" peculiarities characteristic" of the latter, is really 
too preposterous for serious consideration. 

But, says the gentleman, speaking of certain ad- 
venturers in Virginia — " These were the men from 
whom Virginia obtained liei' peculiarities character- 
istic, &c. ; these were the men who may have 
stamped the Virginian character with that open, ge- 
nerous, hospitable, dashing spirit, which it retains to 
the present day !" It has been so long a profitable 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 55 

investment of pen, ink, paper, and unmeaning servile 
language, wherewith to scribble flattery to the lead- 
ing politicians of Virginia, by ascribing to them 
these (in the United States) very common virtues, 
that I shall express no surprise at their present 
abused application. We have heard almost as much 
of the frankness, the generosity, hospitality, &c. of 
the Virginians, as if they were the only people in the 
Union inclined to the cultivation of the kindnesses 
of polite intercourse ; and lo ! here we have them 
paraded before the public as those grand '' peculiari- 
ties characteristic" of Queen Elizabeth and Sir 
Walter Raleigh, wdiich was discovered by Washing- 
ton Irving, Esq. — illustrated by the soft lullaby of 
his apologist, and which Mr. Jo. Seawell Jones, of 
Shocco, had the impudence to mock, deride, and 
condemn, as outrages upon the truth of history. — 
The Virginians are no more remarkable for these 
household virtues than the people of Massachusetts 
or any other state. They are the common qualities 
of every American gentleman, and exceptions are 
as numerous in Virginia as any where else. 

But I am told that the memorials of Sir Walter 
Raleigh, in North Carolina, '' were derived at second 
hand from Virginia, and actually imported from En- 
gland by the way of Jamestown." This is a question 
which I can very easily settle, and if the apologist 
of Mr. Irving had been capable of " any very j^ro- 
found rescarchcs,^^ he might have done so himself. 
I mentioned expressly the legend of *' Sir Halter 
Raleigh^s sldp^^^ which is one of the most striking 



56 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

and beautiful memorials of the Raleigh colony, and 
which is worth more than all the mongrel " pecu- 
liarities characteristic," &c. which Mr. Irving could 
discover, were he to become as profound in the life 
of Sir Walter as he undoubtedly is in that of our dis- 
tinguished countryman, John Jacob Astor. This 
legend of Raleigh's ship is noticed by Lawson, the 
first edition of whose history was published in 1809, 
and is brought up in connection with the tradition of 
the Hatteras tribes of Indians, that they were de- 
scended from the white people of Sir Walter, who 
were left on Roanoke Island and afterwards aban- 
doned by Governor White. The poor colonists were, 
doubtless, throughout their whole lives, expecting 
one of Sir Walter Raleigli^s ships as their only 
means of relief; and as by degrees they amalga- 
mated with the savages, the rising mixed generation 
caught the hope, and handed it down to the days of 
Lawson. The Hatteras Indians, in 1703, were a 
mixed and somewhat more civilized race, and the 
practice of intermarrying with the whites continued 
at that day. After a most rigid scrutiny into their 
subsequent history, I have achieved one remarkable 
fact — that in thus gradually losing the ^^peculiarities 
characteristic^^ of American savages, they brought 
down with them the tradition of " Sir Walter 
RaleigNs ship" and perpetuated it upon the very 
spot of its birth. 

This, then, is one memorial of Sir Walter in North 
Carolina, which could not have been imported from 
Jamestown. Let us now try another. 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 57 

When Governor White left the Raleigh colony on 
Roanoke Island in 1587, he enjoined it upon them, 
that in case they removed, they should carve 
upon a tree the name of their new place of abode. 
On his return, in 1590, he found the island abandon- 
ed ; but, on reaching the tree, he found the word 
Croatan carved without the sign of the cross, which 
had been agreed upon as a secret signal of distress. 
I have collected much curious matter as to the ve- 
neration of the Indians for this tree, wiiich I cannot 
here throw out ; and it is sufficient at present to 
state, that I have encountered two persons of very 
advanced years who remembered and deplored its 
death ; and to this day the last remains of its stump 
are pointed to you, and the poor Islander — ignorant 
he may be of every thing else — tells you proudly 
that it was Sir Walter's Tree. 

I could point out numberless memorials of Raleigh 
in North Carolina which could not possibly have 
been imported from Jamestown. The apologist of 
Mr. Irving might as well have said that old Ply- 
mouth obtained its pilgrim memorials second-hand 
from Virginia ; or that the ruins of the Raleigh co- 
lony, now visible and tangible on Roanoke Island, 
were like the "peculiarities characteristic," &c. of 
Mr. Irving, transmigrated through the souls of the 
Scotch king and a batch of his flatterers, via the 
city of Jamestown to North Carolina. 

When Sir Walter, on the 7th of March, 1589, as- 
signed his interest in the discoveries made under his 
letters patent, he styled himself " chief governor of 

8 



58 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

Assamacomoe — alias Wingandaceo — alias Virginia ;" 
and as these Indian names embraced but a small 
portion even of North Carolina, it appears that he 
did not consider Virginia so comprehensive an ap- 
pellation as it afterwards came to be, and that it did 
not then include the present state of that name. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that because Bar- 
tholomew Gosnold saw fit to call nearly the whole 
of North America Virginia in the year 1602, that 
ergo Sir Walter had done so in 1594; for we find 
that Sir Richard Grenville, in his first voyage to 
Roanoke in 1585, calls the country between Cape 
Fear and Cape Lookout, Florida ; and so, after all, 
if Virginia did extend to '' Uncle Timmy" to the 
north, it did not go any further south than about the 
site of the present town of Beaufort, not more than 
one hundred miles from the island. If Pacificator 
will look into Smith's History of Virginia too, he will 
see Roanoke and the adjacent islands laid off on a 
map under the name of " Old Virginia." So that it 
appears that even Smith did not consider himself in 
the proper place. The truth is, the name of Virginia 
was extended from Roanoke (by voyages subsequent 
to the Raleigh colony,) first to the north, and after- 
wards the southern coast much further south than 
Cape Fear, received the name. I cannot refrain from 
commending to the studious perusal of Pacificator, a 
work which he seems never to have read, viz. Smith's 
History of Virginia. In this very old and interesting 
account of Virginia he would learn one important 
fact, viz. that the first expedition which sailed for 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 09 

James's River, and which settled Jamestown, was 7iot 
commanded by Captain John Smith as he seems to 
think. 

"But," says Pacificator, "North Carolina in 1650 
was settled by emigrants principally from the State 
of Virginia." Be it so. They were very wise Vir- 
ginians to come over to a land more genial in its 
climate, more various in its resources, and more illus- 
trious in its historic associations. They were won 
over perhaps by the very fact that it was " the Vir- 
ginia" of Raleigh, and, as such, different in all its pe- 
culiarities from "^/te Virginia'^ of a man by the name 
of John Smith. They had heard that Grenville, 
Cavendish, Drake, Hariot, and Lane, all men of the 
age of Elizabeth, had been but the agents of Raleigh 
in consecrating it to the genius of English freedom ; 
and seeing around them every day those dangerous 
violations of the liberty of the subject which had de- 
scended to the government of Jamestown, in the shape 
perhaps of a " peculiarity characteristic " of the 
Scotch King, they came to the solitudes of North 
Carolina, where, at least, the freedom of opinion 
was safe. When Pacificator shall convict any North 
Carolina memorial of Raleigh of being imported 
from Virginia, Mr. Jo. Sea well Jones, of Shocco, re- 
commends him to hang it up in his own cabinet of 
" sounding brass and tinkling cymbals ;" as North 
Carolina has had enough of Virginian influences, since 
the days of Thomas Jefferson, without going back to 
the days of the cowardly monarch under whose au- 
spices she was first settled. 



60 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



CHAP. V. 

EXTRACT FROM THE "PICTURESQUE HISTORY OF 
NORTH CAROLINA," 

ROANOKE ISLAND.* 

" Such is the aspect of this shore, 
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more ; 
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair, 
We start, for soul is wanting there." 

GlOUR. 

I HAVE never wandered over the Island of Roanoke 
without a feelmg of melancholy, as intense as that 
of Byron whilst contemplating the fallen greatness 
of Greece. The days of her glory are over, and 
gone with those beyond the flood ; but still she is to 
me an island of the heart, for her shores are the 
graves of the warlike and the wise. The native In- 
dian built his Machicomack on her hills ; and there, 
too, stood the city of Raleigh, the birth-place of tlie 
Anglo-American ; and thus was Roanoke known, 
long before the beach of Jamestown was settled or 
the rock of Plymouth consecrated. She is the clas- 
sic land of all English America, and will live in the 
future story of our Republic as the mother-earth of 

* The above extract from the " Picturesque History of North Carolina " 
applies so strictly to the subject of this book, that it is here inserted as an 
additional chapter. 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 61 

American liberty. The illustrious names of Raleigh, 
of Cavendish, of Grenville, and of Drake — the he- 
roes of the reign of Elizabeth — are a part and por- 
tion of her history. Hariot, the mathematician and 
philosopher of the age, for the space of a whole year 
studied its natural resources and Indian history ; and 
nearly two hundred and fifty years since, gave to the 
world a book unequalled for the accuracy and the 
interest of its details. It would seem, indeed, as if 
the chivalry and learning of that age had contributed 
this splendid representation, to give a dazzling bril- 
liancy to the early history of that State on w hose 
shores the flag of England was first unfurled, and in 
whose vallies, and over whose hills, the mountain 
Goddess Liberty first shouted the cry of American 
Independence. Bear witness, Mecklenburg, on the 
20th of May, 1775. 

But it is not historic association alone which 
makes sacred the shores and vine-clad forests of 
Roanoke. Nature seems to have exerted herself to 
adorn it as the Eden of the new w^orld. The rich- 
est garniture of flowers, and the sweetest minstrelsy 
of birds, are there. In traversing the Northern sec- 
tion of the island, in the spring time of the year, 
flow^ers and sweet-scented herbs, in t))e w ildest luxu- 
riance, are strewm along your winding way, wel- 
coming you with their fragrance to tlieir cherished 
isle. The wild rose-bush, w hich at times springs up 
into nurseries of one hundred yards in extent, 
" blooms blushing " to the song of the thousand birds 
that are basking in her bovvers. The mocking-bird, 



62 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA, 

too, whatever ornithologists may say of its " chimney 
habits," makes this his favorite haunt ; and I have 
myself seen him pillowed on the highest cluster of 
roses, and swinging with his weight the slender tree, 
as he w^arbled out his most exquisite song. It may 
be, however, that Roanoke is the very spot, where, 
in imitation of the Eastern queen of song, the mock- 
ing-bird fell in love with the rose. 

There are stately pine forests extending along the 
centre of the island ; but the most beautiful of its 
trees are what are commonly called dogwood, the 
laurel, and a delicate species of the white oak. I 
have seen a forest composed of these trees, the 
branches and limbs of which w^ere literally inter- 
twisted and knitted together by the embraces of the 
Roanoke vine, which here, in its native garden, grows 
with extraordinary exuberance. 

Within the deep shades of these reclining vintages, 
the spirit of solitude at times reigns in undisturbed 
majesty. At mid-day, wiien the heat of the summer's 
sun is too glowing for exertion, there is not the chirp 
of a bird to break the solemnity of the spot. The 
long and slender vine snake, which at other hours 
is seen industriously threading his way through the 
mazes of the vintage, has now suspended himself on 
a twig, and hangs as idle and as still as a black silk 
chord. If you hear the tread of footsteps, it is not 
of man, but the stealthy retreat of an unsuspecting 
fawn, which hath slept too long, and which now, 
like a woodland nymph, hies away on the approach 
of man. But in the morning and in the evening this 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 63 

scene of quiet and of repose is all changed. It is 
then the granary of the island, and the birds have all 
assembled and are warbling in bacchanal confusion 
their morning or evening hymn. The scenery of 
Roanoke is neither grand nor sublime. There are 
no Alpine summits to mingle with clouds, but a series 
of gentle undulations, and a few abrupt hills, in the 
valleys of which the richly-dressed scenery I have 
described may be found. If it should ever be the 
lot of the reader to stroll under the vintage shades 
of Roanoke — made impervious to the rays of the 
sun by the rich foliage and clustering grapes above 
him — he will not venture to discredit the highly- 
wrought sketches of Hariot, nor mock the humbler 
enthusiasm of the volume now before him. I re- 
member once to have stood upon the loftiest eminence 
of the island, and to have watched the progress of a 
sunset. It was on a summer's eve, which had been 
made peculiarly clear by a violent thunder squall the 
preceding night, and not a film of a cloud or a vapor 
was to be seen about the horizon or in the blue vault 
of heaven. There was not a breath of air to stir the 
slender leaf of the few lofty pines that straggled 
around me, and even the mocking-bird seemed to 
have hushed his capricious song, to enjoy the intense 
feeling of the moment. To the westward of the 
island, the waters of the Albemarle crept sluggishly 
along; and in the winding current of the Swash se- 
veral vessels stood, with out-spread but motionless 
wings. Away down to the South, the Pamlico spread 
itself out, like an ocean of molten gold, gleaming 



64 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

along the banks of Cliickamacomico and Hatteras ; 
and, contrasted with this, were the dark waters 
which separate Roanoke from the sea-beach, and 
which were now sliaded from the tints of the sunset 
by the whole extent of the island. 

A sea of glory streamed along the narrow ridge 
— dividing the inland waters from the ocean ; and 
beyond this the boundless Atlantic heaved her 
chafed bosom of sapphire and of gold against the 
base of yon stormy Cape. I enjoyed and lived in that 
sunset and twilight hour. I thought of the glorious 
destiny of the land on which I trod — as glorious as 
the waters and the earth then around me. I thought 
of the genius and the death of Raleigh — of the heroic 
devotedness of Grenville — of the gallantry of Ca- 
vendish and Drake — of the learning of Hariot — of 
the nobleness of Manteo, the Lord of Roanoke — of 
the adventurous expedition of Sir Ralph Lane up the 
river Moratock — of the savage array of the blood- 
thirsty Wingina — of the melancholy fate of the last 
of the Raleigh colonies — of Virginia Dare, the first 
Anglo-American — of the agony of her mother — and 
I then thought of those exquisite lines of Byron, 

" Shrine of the mighty, can it be 
That this is all remains of thee V 

On the ruins of the ancient city of Raleigh " the 
indolent wrecker now sits and smokes the pipe of 
oblivion — a very wretch " — ignorant of the glorious 
associations of the land of his birth. He can tell 
you nothing of the deeds of those whose early efforts 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 65 

ill the settlement of Roanoke gave an impulse to the 
English colonization in America, and thus laid the 
foundations of our great American Republic. He 
will speak vaguely of the name of Sir Walter 
Raleigh, and will regale you with legends and 
stories of pirates and wrecks, which it is the busi- 
ness of the novelist, and not the historian, to record. 
Such of them as I could link with the RaleJ2:li colo- 
nies, I have engrafted upon more authentic materials, 
and perhaps the traditionary history of no country is 
equal in interest to that of Roanoke Island. The 
legend of Sir Walter Raleigh's ship, of the great bat- 
tle of Hatteras, and the nativity of Virginia Dare, 
which I have perhaps too painfully detailed, are the 
best assurances that the names of those Avho first 
planted the flag of old mother England on our shores 
cannot die. 

The Island of Roanoke is at present tenanted by 
a class of people as rude and as boisterous as their 
native seas. They are a race of adventurous pilots 
and hardy mariners, and in their light craft seek the 
remotest islands of the West Indies ; and occasionally 
with their freights of naval stores, penetrate into the 
Mediterranean, to the ports of Gibraltar and Malaga. 

A race of rugged Mariners are tliesc, 
Unpolislied men, and boisterous as their seas. 
The native Islanders alone their care, 
And hateful he who breathes a foreign air. 
These did the Ruler of the tlecp onhiin 
To build proud navies, and command the main ; 
On canvass wings to cut their watery way, 
No bird so fleet, no thought so swift as they. 

OovssEr. 



66 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

Am I then too enthusiastic in the history of 
Roanoke Island ] It is the birth-place of Virginia 
Dare — it was the home of the faithful and noble 
Lord of Roanoke; and every hill, and every vale, is 
marked in its history by scenes of joy and woe. 
The battle fields of the warlike Wingina are there ; 
and there the imagination may stretch itself back- 
wards over the course of time, and dwell upon the 
Indian legends of wars that had passed, when the 
assembled host of barbarians fought upon the beach 
that they might be cheered on by the music of the 
waves. I have dreamed away many a sunny day 
in the solitude of its woods, and while reveling in 
my fancy upon the present magnificence of our Re- 
public, I have not forgotten that I stood within that 
paradise of the new world in which Providence had 
decreed tlie nativity of the first-born of a great and 
mighty people. 

" While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;" 
while the great events of her annals are not forgotten, 
the dignity of the history of North Carolina shall 
stand — alike unsullied by the self-abasement of her 
own sons, or the fiendish falsehoods of the Infidel of 
Monticello. 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 67 



CHAP. VI. 

MISS FLORA MACDONALD, 



The romantic story of this celebrated heroine is ^\ 
not confined to Scotland, nor to the fortunes of the ^-^ 
house of Stuart. The banks of the Cape Fear, in 
North Carolina, were for several years distinguished 
by her residence ; and it is this circumstance which 
will link her name with the history of that state, al- 
most as inseparably as it already is with that of her 
own Scotland. 

/ The rebellions of Scotland had contributed to the 
population of the Cape Fear counties long before the 
famous revolt of the Highland clans, under the chival- 
rous banner of Prince Charles Edward in 1745, 
after which much of the nobility and gentry of the 
Stuart party sought a refuge amidst the solitudes of 
our forests. The fatal battle of Culloden annihilat- 
ed the power and independence of the Highland 
" lairds ;" and in the year 1747 a colony of five 
thousand Highlanders arriv^ed, and settled on the 
banks of the Cape Fear. They came originally 
from hard necessity, but, even up to this time, from 
ties of relationship, or the still deeper sympathy of 
mutual origin, the Highland emigrants are prone to 
seek the sandy region of their countrymen. He who 
cannot go to Scotland may penetrate into the coun- 



68 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROI-INA. 

ties of Cumberland, Moore, Richmond, Robeson, and 
indeed into nearly all the Cape Fear counties, where 
he will find even the Gaelic tongue, in all its native 
purity. 

Flora MacDonald was the daughter of MacDonald 
of Milton, in the island of South Uist ; but her father 
having died during her infancy, and her mother 
having married MacDonald of Armadale, in Skye, 
an adherent of the government, she was thus endeared 
to both parties, — the government and that of Prince 
Charles, the young pretender. Her more usual 
residence was with her brother, the proprietor of 
Milton ; but such seems to have been the estimation 
of her character, that she was beloved by every clan, / 
rebellionists or not. 

She did not see the Prince Charles until after the 
battle of Culloden, when he was a wanderer, with- 
out a home, and without friends or adherents. His 
forces had been slaughtered and routed, and he him- 
self driven to the hills and caves of his kingdom to 
find a hiding-place ; and at such a moment Flora 
MacDonald adopted him and his cause, She dis- 
guised him in a female dress, and guided him from 
island to island ; and, after encountering every hard- 
ship and every peril, put him into the way to escape 
to France, where he had friends on and around the 
throne. 

/ Flora MacDonald was arrested, confined to prison, 
and after a year was released, and then carried into 
the court society of London by I.ady Primrose, a 
Jacobite lady of wealth and distinction. It is record- 



MEMORIALS OF NOKTH CAROLINA. 69 

ed that twenty coaches of the proudest names of the 
realm stood at the door of Lady Primrose, to pay 
their respects to the heroine of the Scotch rebellion, 
only a few days after her release. A cliaise-and-four 
were fitted up to take her back to Scotland ; and 
when she w^as consulted as to who should escort her 
home, she selected her fellow-prisoner, General 
Malcolm McLeod, who boasted that he "came to 
London to be hanged, but rode back in a chaise-and- 
four with Flora MacDonald." 

She afterwards married Kingsburg MacDonald, 
of Kingsburg, the son of one of her old associates 
in the perilous salvation of Prince Charles ; and he, 
like all the Highland gentlemen, was encumbered 
with heavy obligations, in the way of private debts, 
and still heavier oaths of fealty to the house of Ha- 
nover. In 1773, Doctor Johnson and Mr. Boswell 
visited the house of Kingsburg MacDonald, and 
were entertained by the generosity and hospitality 
of the proprietor and his noble spouse. She was 
then a fine, genteel-looking woman, full of the en- 
thusiasm of her early life; and as she was now the 
mistress of the house in which both the fugitive prince 
and herself had been once entertained by the father 
of her husband, she put the great living patriarch of 
English letters in the same bed in which her un- 
fortunate prince had on that occasion slept. In the 
tour to the Hebrides, it is related that Kingsburg 
MacDonald was embarrassed in his private aflairs, 
and contemplated a migration to America. 

I think it was in 1775 when siie arrived in 



70 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

North Carolina and settled at Cross Creek, the seat 
of the present town of Fayetteville. It was a 
stormy period of our history ; and those who came 
among us at that time to seek peace and content- 
ment were disappointed, for they met, at their very 
landing, civil and intestine war. The policy of the 
royal governor, too, was to carry along with him the 
Highlanders, whom he represented as still liable to 
confiscation of estate for their former rebellion. The 
prudent emigrants were too recently from the bloody 
field of CuUoden to run heedlessly into another war of 
extermination. They measured the strength of the 
English government by their own experience, and 
seeing around them no prince of their own blood to 
lead them on to battle, they nearly to a man joined 
the royal standard. 

The truth is, the countrymen of Flora MacDonald 
were incapable of appreciating the nature of our re- 
volution. They had come to North Carolina in 
quest of fortune and undisturbed peace, and clung to 
the government from a double sense of interest and 
of fear. The sublime idea of an American empire 
was not within the range of their hopes or anticipa- 
tions ; but Scotland w^as again to be their home, 
when King George should have forgotten their rebel- 
lion, and fortune should again have restored to them 
wealth and importance. 

Kinffsburff MacDonald entered with much zeal 
into the cause of the royal government, and assisted 
his kinsman. General Donald MacDonald, in his ex- 
tensive preparations for the famous battle of Moore's 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 71 

Creek. Flora, too, is said to have embraced, with 
much enthusiasm, the same cause, and to have ex- 
horted her countrymen to adhere to their king. The 
settlement of Cross Creek was the metropolis of the 
Highlanders, and there they congregated to listen to 
the counsels of their aged chiefs. The MacDonalds, 
the MacLeods, the Camerons, the MacNeils, and the 
Campbells were all represented there in the person 
of some beloved and hereditary chieftain. 

On the 1st of February, 1776, Donald MacDonald 
issued a proclamation, calling upon all loyal High- 
landers to join his standard at Cross Creek, and on 
that day fifteen hundred men mustered under his 
command. The enthusiastic spirit of Flora forgot 
that it was not for " her Charlie" she was warrinsr, 
and tradition says she was seen among the 
ranks, encouraging and exhorting them to battle. 
Loyalty seems to have been a strange principle in 
the bosom of the Highlanders, Thirty years before 
this period, they fought the battle of Culloden 
against the house of Hanover ; and now they are on 
the eve of a similar engagement for its support, 
against the cause of freedom. 

Kingsburg MacDonald was a captain in the 
army of Donald MacDonald, and his wife followed 
the fortunes of the camp. She proceeded with the 
army towards the camp of General Moore, on Rock- 
fish River, and was with her husband on the morn- 
ing of the twenty-sixth of February, on the banks 
of Moore's Creek, a small stream in the county of 
New Hanover. The Whig army, under the command 



72 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

of Colonel Lillington, was encamped on the other 
side of this stream ; and on the morning of the twenty- 
seventh the celebrated battle of Moore's Creek was 
fought, the Highlanders signally routed, Colonels 
MacLeod and Campbell both slain, Kingsburg 
BlacDonald taken prisoner, and Flora once more a 
fugitive, and indeed an outlaw. The Highlanders 
were a brave and loyal race, but, poor fellows, they 
had their CuUoden in North Carolina as well as in 
Scotland. 

Flora MacDonald returned to Cross Creek with- 
out her husband ; and there she found the Whig ban- 
ner triumphant, under the command of Colonel Alex- 
ander Martin, afterwards governor of the state. 
The sad reverses of her fortune seemed to have but 
begun. Tradition says her house was pillaged and 
her plantation ravaged by the cruelty of the Whigs, 
and there is too much reason to believe it true. The 
Highland population was, for many years, conquered, 
and kept in subjection by the remembrance of this 
defeat; and it is only during the latter part of the 
war, when the contest became more doubtful, that 
they again joined in the heat of the battle. 

The Highlanders, and with them the husband of 
Flora MacDonald, there is too much reason to fear, 
shared the fate of the unfortunate rebellionists in 
1745. Their estates were ravaged by force; and as 
soon as a state government was established, the rava- 
ges of the Whigs were legalized by an act of confisca- 
tion. Kingsburg MacDonald remained in North Caro- 
lina but a few years, when he embarked in a sloop of 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 73 

war for Scotland. Mr. Chambers, in his admirable 
history of the Rebellion of 1745, records a circumstance 
that occurred during the voyage, illustrative of her 
character. The sloop encountered a French ship, 
and in the thickest of the battle Flora was on the deck, 
encouraging the crew until the contest ceased. She 
afterwards philosophized, by saying that she had en- 
dangered her life for both the house of Stuart and 
the house of Hanover, but that she did not perceive 
she had profited by her exertions. 

There is one anecdote connected with the battle 
of Moore's Creek, and with Donald MacDonald, who 
was a kinsman of Flora, the Highland chief, which 
deserves to be here recorded. He was an old vete- 
ran in the art of war, having been engaged as an of- 
ficer in the army of tlie young Pretender in 1745, in 
which character he appeared in the battle of Cullo- 
den. He was sick at the moment of the battle of 
Moore's Creek, and, committing the fate of his coun- 
trymen into the hands of his aid-de-camp, Colonel 
MacLeod, he remained in his camp. After his forces 
had been entirely routed, the Whig commanders found 
him alone, seated on a stump, and, as they walked 
up to him, he waved the parchment scroll of his 
commission in the air, and surrendered it into their 
hands. 

The town of Fayetteville now covers the spot for- 
merly the metropolis of the Highland clans. There 
lived Flora MacDonald, and a host of others, whose 
names appear in the history of Scotland as brave 
and warlike spirits. To me it was a beautiful spot, 

10 



74 MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 

as seen in 1828, before its destruction by fire, when 
the spring time of year contributed to embellish the 
banks of the small stream that winds its w^ay 
through the very streets of the town. I remember 
one view which would have been a fit spot even for 
the romantic genius of Flora MacDonald. There 
was a small bridge that spanned the stream, connect- 
ing the court-house and the city-hall, and, standing 
on this bridge, you had first the office of Mr^ Eccles, 
an accomplished attorney, immediately before you, 
suspended over the creek, and connected with the 
street by a bridge ; the stream then flowed on through 
a spacious and richly-cultivated garden, and then hid 
itself amidst a profusion of the richest shrubbery. 
On the left was the Episcopal church, and, away 
down the creek, the high steeple of the Presbyterian 
meeting-house shot up into the air as if it had been 
the monument of the spot. A beautiful crystal 
stream, with embroidered banks, winding its way 
through the heart of a city ; such an ornament had 
the Cross Creek of the Highlanders. There is ano- 
ther creek, that courses along the southern extremity 
of the town and just below the city ; the two 
streams apparently cross at right angles. The su- 
perstition was of old, that the waters actually cross- 
ed each other, but, by a little observation, you will 
perceive that the streams have, as it were, accident- 
ally touched, and, without farther conflict, separated, 
and gone off quietly on their serpentine courses- 
Hence the name of Cross Creek. The surrounding 
country is a sandy barren, with but little under- 



MEMORIALS OF NORTH CAROLINA. 75 

growth, and, but for the lofty pines that cover it, 
would pass for a Lybian desert. In the midst of 
this VA ide waste of sand stands the American home 
of Flora MacDonald, a city in the wilderness, an 
Oasis in a sandy desert. The life of no female in 
the history of any country was ever more deserving 
the attention of the historian. Her adventurous 
deeds in the service of the unfortunate prince have 
been celebrated by almost every poet of the age, and 
have, more than any single subject, infused a spirit 
of love and war into the minstrelsy of her own poeti- 
cal country. 



.1 



NOTES. 



NOTES 



NOTES TO CHAPTERS FIRST AND SECOND. 

The Journals of Amadas and Barlowe may be found in Hakluy% 
commencing with the 301 pasre, to which the reader is referred for authori- 
ties. The dinner party described in the second chapter is scarcely any thing 
more than a copy of the text in Hakluyt. It was, by the way, a much 
better dinner tiian I myself have sometimes enjoyed on Roanoke Island; 
and I trust that my friend Mrs. Mekins will excuse me for asserting the 
superiority of the good Indian woman over any of the housewives of the 
Banks. 

NOTE TO CHAPTER THIRD. 

The original design of these memorials was simply to sketch the begin- 
ning and the end of the authority of England over the Colonies. They 
appeared in the New- York Mirror, and might have been continued had not 
the criticisms of newspapers diverted me into the lield of controversy. The 
two first chapters sketch the origin of the dominion of England, and the 
third celebrates its downfall ; for, whatever may be said of the Mecklenburg 
Declaration by the philosophers of Virginia, it was the " Beginning." "In 
the beginning was the word, and the word was " Independence. 

For freedom's battle once begun. 
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, 
Though baffled oft, is ever won. 

On the subject of the Mecklenburg Declaration I have much yet to pub- 
lish. I have collected much material for a sketch of the lives of the heroes 
of the 20th of May, and I have, besides, much additional evidence of the 
authenticity of the paper to bring before the world. It has been intimated 
to me by a friend, that the present Envoy Extraordinary of the government 
of the United States near the throne of England had been entrusted with 



80 NOTES. 

a commission to explore the archives of the Colonial Office for evidence 
against the Mecklenburg Declaration. Under whose superintendence and 
advice this " exploring expedition " was got up it does not behove me to say, 
but 1 can certainly wish its worthy commander whatever success he may 
deserve. He may depend upon his deserts being fairly and thoroughly can- 
vassed whenever the fruits of his expedition shall have been disclosed to 
the public. While on this subject I beg to make one remark in my own 
behalf, viz. that no one should mistake my warmth for bitterness. I assert, 
that no citizen of North Carolina can study her history without imbibing a 
deep feeling against the character of Mr. Jefferson. Let him look at the 
high 'place of the Stale before his elevation, and then go on and see where 
she was a few years afterwards, and he will find other grounds of hostility 
than his notorious abuse of her history. 



NOTE THIRD— THE POTATO. 

There is some authority for the tradition that the potato was carried to 
Ireland from Roanoke. I have seen it in very many books of modern date, 
and have never lost an opportunity of searching for its truth. I remember 
to have canvassed the matter with my excellent friend Mr. Bancroft, while 
he was engaged in the composition of the first volume of his beautiful his- 
tory of the United States. I agreed with him in his conclusion that the 
authorities in its favor did not entitle it to a place in his work. Hariot, in 
his account of Roanoke Island, describes several kinds of roots which may 
have been what is commonly called the Irish Potato. I here extract his ac- 
count of two of them : 

" Openank are a kind of roots of round form, some of the bignesse of wal- 
" nuts, some farre greater, which are found in moist and marsh ground, grow- 
" ing many together one by another in ropes, as though they were fastened 
" by a string. Being boiled or sodden, they are very good meat. 

" Kaishucpenank. A white kind of roots, about the bignesse of hennes 
" eggs and near of that form. Their taste was not so good to our seem- 
«• ing as of the other, and therefore their place and manner of growing not so 
•' much cared for by us ; the inhabitants, notwithstanding, used to boil and eat 
«« many." 

Some years ago I called the attention of my lamented friend H. B. | 
Croom to this subject, and entreated his co-operation in the labors of in- \ 
vestigation. Poor fellow, he was too soon lost in the sad shipwreck of the \ 
Home on the coast of North Carolina, and with him perished many a bright I 
hope. He was so accomplished, so zealous, and then his genius was as f 
beautiful and as various as the flowers whose nature and whose history he / 



NOTES. 



81 



had so assiduously studied. North Carolina lost in him what she could not 
well spare — an accomplished and affectionate son, whose heart was wholly 
hers, and whose bright genius would some day have adorned her history. 
But 1 have strayed from the subject of this note. The potato, it is supposed, 
was carried to Smerwick, in Ireland, by John White, governor of the city of 
Raleigh, on his return to England in 1587. There is a legend, too, that Sir 
Walter Raleigh caused them to be planted in his garden on his Irish estate. 
In conclusion, I beg to say that I esteem it quite as well authenticated as 
most of the facts in the history of that age, and that I confidently expect in 
the course of a few years to establish beyond controversy that the Irish 
Potato was a native of Roanoke Island. 



NOTE FOURTH— TOBACCO 

Was first carried to England, not Europe, from Roanoke. Its Indian 
name was Uppoicoc, and is thus described by Hariot : 

" There is an her be, which is sowed apart by itself, and is called by the 
" inhabitants Uppowoc. In the West Indies it hath divers names, accord- 
" ing to the several places and countries where it groweth and is used. The 
" Spaniards generally call it Tobacco. The leaves thereof being dried and 
" brought into powder, they used to take the fume or smoke thereof, by suck- 
♦« ing it thorow pipes made of clay into their stomache and head ; from 
" whence it purgeth superfluous fleame and other grosse humours, and open- 
" eth all the pores and passages of the body ; by which means the use 
" thereof not only preserveth the body from obstruction, but also (if any be 
"so that they have not been of too long continuance) in short time breaketh 
«' them, whereby their bodies are notably preserved in health, and know not 
"many grievous diseases, wherewithal! we in England are oftentimes 
" aflSicted. 

« This Uppowoc is in so precious estimation amongst them, that they 
" think their gods are marvellously delighted therewith ; whereupon some- 
•♦ time they make hallowed fires, and cast some of the powder therem for 
" a sacrifice ; being in a storme upon the watere, to pacify their gods they 
" cast some up into the air and into the water ; so a weare for fish being 
" newly set up, they cast some therein and into the air ; also after an escape 
" from danger they cast some into the air likewise, but all done with strange 
" gestures — stamping, sometimes dancing, clapping of hands, holding up of 
" hands, and staring up into the heavens, uttering therewithall and chatter- 
" ing strange words and noises." 

Hariot says that men and women of great calling, and learned physicians 
also, used it freely upon its introduction into England. 

11 



82 NOTES. 



NOTE FIFTH— RELIGION OF THE ROANOKE INDIANS. 

Manioac was the word which comprised all their'gods. They believed, 
however, in one great God existing from all eternity. When God conceiv- 
ed the plan of the world, he made other gods to assist him in its erection 
and its government ; and these subordinate deities they conceived were 
represented in the sun, moon, and stars. A woman was first created ; and 
the obvious necessity of peopling the newly-created world justified an in- 
trigue with some lascivious god, and thus the first of the children of the 
forest were brought forth. They called the temples which they built to their 
gods, Machicomacks. The most distinguished of their petty gods was 
called Kewas. 



NOTE SIXTH— GOLD MINES. 

I do not place much reliance upon the authority of any of the old voy- 
agers on the subject of the precious metals, but it is somewhat singular 
that the Raleigh colonies should have heard of their existence in that very 
section of the new world where it has been since so abundantly found. Sir 
Ralph Lane made a voyage in small boats in 1586 up the Albemarle Sound, 
and penetrated four days' journey up tiie Roanoke (Moratock) river in quest 
of information as to a country called Chaunis Temoatan, where, from the 
accounts of the Indians, there was an abundance of the precious metals. 
This country was described as being above twenty days' journey west of the 
sea-coast, and to have been subject to the incursions of the Mangoaks, a 
powerful tribe of Indians who occupied the immediate interior of the con- 
tinents. The savages described accurately enough the art of raining in its 
rudest state, but it was perhaps the cataract of golden waters which excited 
the zeal of Sir Ralph Lane. In his voyage up the Moratock (Roanoke), 
he was hourly expecting a view of the South Sea, and was fretted with 
an apprehension that the Pacific Ocean would break upon his view be- 
fore he could realize the golden stories of the Indians. Leaving, however, 
every reader to the exercise of his own faith or skepticism, I shall proceed 
to arrange the authorities upon which I assert the theory, that the golden 
treasures of her mountains had been explored by a race of people more inge- 
nious and civilized than the savages of the American wilderness. 

The first gleamings of light upon this point of history are from the jour- 
nals of the French Hugonots, who in 1562 settled at St. Helena, Beaufort, 
S. C. The genius, foresight, and liberality of Coligny founded the enter- 
prise which is even now distinguished for having originated the name of 
Carolina, and as having been the first to seek a home in the new world, in 



NOTES. 83 

quest, not of the golden treasures of the savages, but of the still more pre- 
cious blessings of the freedom of conscience. 

In the interesting work of Laudonniere (Ilakluyt, vol. 3, pp. 369, 70, 
71, &.C.) allusion is frequently made to the existence of gold in a country to the 
north-west, and all the accounts he records tend to strengthen the theory 
that at about thirty or forty leagues in that direction from St. Helena, there 
was a splendid city, the metropolis of a wealthy and warlike people. In the 
376 page he alludes to an account which he received from the savages of the 
country of Cliiquola, which, as far as he could judge, was " a very faire 
citie." " For they said unto me, that within the enclosure there was a 
" great store of houses, which were built very high, wherein there was an 
" infinite number of men like unto themselves, which took no account of 
»' gold, of silver, nor of pearles, seeing they had thereof in abundance. 

" I began then to show them all the parts of heaven, to the intent to leame 
" in what quarter they dwelt, and straightway one of them stretching out 
" his hand, shewed me they dwelt towards the north." 

Again, in 382 page, in describing a visit to an Indian king, he says, "Af- 
" terwards he gave them a certain number of exceeding faire pearles, and 
"two stones of fine crystal and certain silver oare. Our men forgot not to 
"give him certain trilles in recompense of those presents, and required of him 
" the place where silver oare and tlie crystal came. He made them answer 
" that it came ten days' journey from his habitation up within the country, 
" and that the inhabitants of the country did dig the same at the foote of cer- 
"tain high mountains, where they found of it in very good quantitie." 

On page 408 he again introduces the subject of the exceeding wealth 
of the mountains to the north-west, and records the account of an Indian 
who knew the passes of the Apalachi Mountains, where the sandy bottoms 
of rills were dug up with hollow canes or reeds, and grains of precious me- 
tals secured. His whole work, however, teems with rumours of gold, and 
immense power and splendour, to the north and north-west of the sea-coast, 
about the latitudes of 32, 31, and 30 ; and here leaving Rene Laudonniere's 
authority to the discretion of the reader, I shall introduce testimony of a 
more wonderful as well as of a more pertinent character. 

Pedro Morales was a Spaniard, whom Sir Francis Drake, in 1586, on his 
return home from his famous West Indian cruise, caught along the coast of 
Florida ; and he related that three score leagues to the north-west of St. 
Helena were the mountains of gold and crystal, and that there was a great 
city sixteen or twenty days' journey in the same direction, called by the 
Spaniards La Grand Copal — " very rich and exceeding great." 

But the most wonderful account of the metallic richness of the country to 
the north-west of St. Helena, (Beaufort, S. C.) is given by one Nicholas 
Burgoignon, alias Holy, who was likewise found by Sir Francis Drake on 



d^' NOTES. 

the coast of Florida. He, too, spoke of the city of La Grand Copal, and 
described its magnificence in " golden and diamond terms." Crystal, gold, 
rubies, and diamonds glittered from every corner of its paths. A Spaniard 
obtained there a diamond worth five thousand crowns, which was worn by 
the governor of St. Augustine. This same Nicholas Burgoignon likewise 
testifies that the mountains of North Carohna shone so brightly with their 
immense masses of crystals, rubies, gold, and diamonds, that he could not 
behold them and keep his sight, and therefore he had to travel by night. I 
am very sorry to say that these mountains afford at this time no such ob- 
stacles to the comforts of a traveller, and that it now requires a vast expen- 
diture of labor and money to get a sight of any of these aforesaid jewels, 
even in the sunniest days. 

Nicholas likewise saw, some fifty leagues from St. Helena, up towards 
La Grand Copal, Indians with long golden rings in their ears and nostrils. 
He likewise saw herds of oxen, but they did not wear gold in their ears and 
nostrils. Both Pedro Morales and Nicholas' describe the Wateree as a 
river which comes from the north-west, and appear to have travelled that way. 
Hakluyt intimates that it was the same as the river Waren, (Cape Fear.) 

So much for French and Spanish authority. Let us now return to the 
annals of the Roanoke colony. They found prevailing on the coast of 
North Carolina, rumours of a still more definite character, as to the geogra- 
phical position of a country of immense mineral wealth. It was twenty days' 
journey due west from the sea-board, and the ways and means of obtaining 
the metal were accurately described. (See Hakluyt, p. 315, vol. 3.) Was- 
sador was the general name of all metals. The country was called Chaunis 
Temoatan, and over the browling rocks of the streams the golden sands were 
caught in bowls and skins. The territory north and north-west of St. He- 
lena (Beaufort, S. C.) will be found to be the same as that west of Cape 
Hatteras ; and the distances from the respective points of calculation are 
sufficiently correct for the indulgence of a mere speculative inquiry. 

Havinq thus exhausted the ancient authorities in support of the theory 
that the gold mines of North Carolina were formerly worked by a race of 
people of superior genius to the common herd of American savages, I 
shall now proceed to detail a few modern facts bearing directly on the sub- 
ject. The gold, though not sought after by a regular mining system until 
within the last twenty years, was still known to exist. At distant and vari- 
ous periods of our history, suspicions of wealthy deposites of gold in certain 
spots of land would arise ; and I have a will, dated 1787, in which the gold 
mines, which may be discovered on a particular plantation, are reserved to 
the heirs generally, and not to the particular legatee, to whom the estate 
was bequeathed. As far back as 1774, gold was sent to Governor Josiah 
Martin, (the last Royal Governor of North Carolina,) from the county of 



NOTES. 



R5 



Guilford ; and this was perhaps the first appearance of a specimen in modem 
times. It should be recollected that civilization is not now a century old as 
far westward in the interior of North Carolina as the river Yadkin, beyond 
which the richest deposites of gold are found ; and that the bug night which 
reigned over that golden region, from the age of Elizabeth to that of George 
II. was sufficient to have buried, all history and tradition. 

Modern enterprise has, however, contributed one argument in favour of the 
antiquity of the gold mines, which, as an authority, is worth every other tes- 
timony. In the sinking of shafts, the earth exhibits indisputable evidences 
of having been disturbed before ; and a few years ago, an earthen crucible 
and several other implements of mining operations were found sixty and 
seventy feet below the surface of the earth. 

Mr. Humphrey Bissell, of Charlotte, North Carolina, a gentleman of 
great scholarship, of the most polite and diversified attainments, and of the 
most independent habit of criticism, is of the opinion that the mines were 
worked ages ago ; and I consider his testimony as of great weight and value. 
He is, as far as I have had an opportunity of observing, the only man who has 
observed with a scientific eye the mining operations of the state. What 
ordinary Mineralogists and Geologists have pretended to do in the course of 
a single tour, Mr. Bissell has made the work of years ; and I doubt whe- 
ther any state in the Union can boast of a citizen so thoroughly taught in 
the mysteries of her mineralogical wealth as North Carolina. 

The speculative reader may indulge in whatever theories his fancy can 
suggest. Whether in the thousand years of past ages a civilized and refin- 
ed people may not have existed, whose very name the calamities of war 
and pestilence may not have swept from the land of their nativity ; and if 
he is fond of dreams and poetical illusions, he may draw upon his imagina- 
tion for the golden streets of La Grand Copal, and find, perhaps, the very 
ruins of the walls that protected it in the phenomenon of the natural 
bulwarlis * of Rowan. 

NOTE SEVENTH. 

The second colony which Sir Walter sent out to Roanoke, sailed from 
Portsmouth on the 26th of April, 1587, under the command of John White, 
who was commissioned as governor of the " citio of Raleigh." I propose 
to make a few extracts illustrative of the history of Roanoke. 

* The J^alural Wall found in old Rowan is, I suppose, called natural be- 
cause no one remembers when it was built. It has, I believe, never been exa- 
mined by a man of science. By liie slightest excavaiion it may be traced many 
miles. «- 



86 NOTES. 

" The 13th of August, our savage Manteo, by the commandment of Sir 
" Walter Rileigh, was christened in Roanoke, and called Lord thereof and 
*' of Dassamonguepeak, in reward of his faithful service. 

"The 18th, Elenor, daughter to the Governor and wife to Ananias Dare, 
"one of the assistants, was delivered of a daughter in Roanoke, and the 
" same was christened there the Sunday following ; and because this child 
" was the first Christian born in Virginia, she was named Virginia. 

A few days after these two remarkable events. Governor White returned 
to England to obtain further supplies ; and here closes all certain knowledge 
of the Raleigh colonists. Governor White afterwards visited Roanoke 
Island as late as the year 1590, but he could not or would not find them. 
Perhaps his followers were mutinous and would not follow him; but be that 
as it may, he finally abandoned his daughter, the little Virginia Dare, and 
his countrymen, to a cruel and an unknown fate. 

After a variety of embarrassments in the waters about the island, he 
finally succeeded in finding the place, where, three years before, he had left 
his colony. I here extract from his journal : 

" Our boats and all things fitted again, we put off from Hatorask, being 
"the number of 19 persons in both boats; but before we could get to the 
"place where our planters were left, it was so exceeding darke that we over- 
" shot the place a quarter of a mile. There we espied, toward the north end 
"of the island, the light of a great fire thorow the woods, to which we pre- 
" sently rowed. When we came right over against it we let fall our grapnel 
"near the shore, and sounded with a trumpet a call,' and afterwards many 
" familiar English tunes of songs, and called to them friendly ; but we had no 
" answer. We therefore landed at day-break, and coming to the fire, we 
"found the grass and sundry rotten trees burning about the place. 

" From thence we went thorow the woods to that part of the island di- 
" rectly over against Dassamonguepeak, and from thence we returned by 
" the water side round about the north point of the island, until we came to 
" the place where I left our colony in the year 1587. In all this we saw in 
" the sand the print of the savages' feet of 2 or 3 sorts, trodden in the night. 
" As we entered up the sandy bank, upon a tree under the very browe there- 
" of were curiously carved those fair Roman letters CRO ; which letters we 
" presently knew to signine the place where I should find the planters seated, 
" according to a secret token agreed upon between them and me at my last 
" departure from them ; which was, tliat in any ways they should not fail to 
" write or carve on tlie trees or posts of the doors the name of the place 
" where they should be seated, for at my coming always they were prepared 
" to remove from Roanoke, 50 miles in the maine. 

" Therefore at my departure from them, in Anno Dom. 1587, I willed them, 
" that if they happen to be distressed in any of those places, then they 



NOTES. 87 

«« should carve over the letters or name a crosse (-f-) in this form ; but we found 
'♦ no such signe of distress. And having well considered of this ; we passed 
" towards the place where they were left in sundry houses, but we found the 
" house taken down, and the place very strongly enclosed with a palisado of 
"great trees, with cortynes and flankers very fort-like; and one of the chief 
«• trees or postes at the right side of the entrance had the bark taken off, and 
« 5 foote from the ground, in fajTC capital letters, was graven CROATOAN, 
" without any cross or sign of distress. 

" This done, we entered into the palisado, where we found many bars of 
" iron, two pigges of lead, four iron foulers, iron, sackin, shotte, and such like 
" heavy things tlu"own here and there, almost overgrown with grasse and 
" weeds." 

So much of extracts. Governor White found his own chests, his armour, 
and various other articles, all, however, nearly ruined by the rains. He re- 
turned to his ships, hoping to get up an expeditionto Croatan ; but impediments 
and embarrassments again intervened ; and after all his painful labours he was 
compelled to return to England without having done his duty either to his 
children or his countrymen. 

The fate of these poor colonists was indeed melancholy. Tradition has 
given us but a faint gleam of their future career. Lawson, in his history of 
North Carolina, says, that for comfort and society they amalgamated with 
the Hatteras Indians. The Hatteras Indians in his time, he says, boasted of 
the descent, saying, that their ancestors could talk out of a book. 

Croatan, the place to which they removed, was the birth-place of the 
generous Manteo, who was a man of great power among the different tribes ; 
and he no doubt became their most efficient friend and protector. 



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i-PRA^':^t 



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